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diff --git a/36164-h/36164-h.htm b/36164-h/36164-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2ebf94 --- /dev/null +++ b/36164-h/36164-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,24767 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +hr.W10 {width:10%; color:black;} + +hr.W20 {width:20%; color:black;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +span.sc {font-variant: small-caps; font-size:125%;} +span.sc2 {font-variant: small-caps; font-size:90%;} + +p.hang1 {margin-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} +p.hang2 {margin-left:3em; text-indent:0em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces;<br /> + or, the Wedded Life, Death, and Marriage of Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkaes, Parish Advocate in the Burgh of Kuhschnappel.</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Jean Paul Friedrich Richter</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Translator: Alexander Ewing</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 19, 2011 [eBook #36164]<br /> +[Most recently updated: November 8, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charles Bowen</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES ***</div> + +<h2>BOHN’S STANDARD LIBRARY.</h2> + +<hr class="W10" /> + +<h3>RICHTER’S</h3> + +<h2>FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES.</h2> + +<h4>GEORGE BELL & SONS</h4> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="sc2">LONDON: YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN<br/> +NEW YORK 66 FIFTH AVENUE, AND<br/> +BOMBAY: 53 ESPLANADE ROAD<br/> +CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON BELL & CO.</span> +</p> + +<h1>FLOWER, FRUIT AND THORN PIECES;</h1> + +<h4>OR, THE</h4> + +<h3>WEDDED LIFE, DEATH, AND MARRIAGE</h3> + +<h4>OF</h4> + +<h2>FIRMIAN STANISLAUS SIEBENKÆS,</h2> + +<h3>PARISH ADVOCATE</h3> + +<h3>IN THE BURGH OF KUHSCHNAPPEL.</h3> + +<h3>(<i>A GENUINE THORN PIECE</i>.)</h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2 class="no-break">JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.</h2> + +<h3>Translated from the German</h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>ALEXANDER EWING.</h3> + +<h4>LONDON</h4> + +<h3>GEORGE BELL AND SONS</h3> + +<h4>1897</h4> + +<h3>[<i>Reprinted from Stereotype plates</i>.]</h3> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_preface1"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<h4>TO THE</h4> + +<h2>SECOND EDITION.</h2> + +<p> +What advantage shall I reap in giving to the world this, my new edition +of ‘Siebenkæs,’ embellished and perfected as it is with all the +additions, corrections, and improvements which it has been in my power +to make? Can I expect to be any the better for it? People will, I +daresay, buy it and read it; but not give much of their time to the +study of it, nor be sufficiently detailed and thorough in their +criticism of it. The Pythia of Criticism has hitherto been chary of her +oracles to me, as the Greek Pythia was to other inquirers; she has +chewed up my laurels, instead of crowning me with them, and prophesied +little or nothing. The author very distinctly remembers setting to +work, for instance, at the second edition of his ‘Hesperus,’<a name="div2Ref_01" href="#div2_01"><sup>[1]</sup></a> with +his pruning-saw in his left hand and his oculist’s knife in his right, +and applying both instruments to the work to an extraordinary extent; +it was in vain, however, that he looked for anything like an +appreciative notice of it, either in literary or non-literary +publications. Similarly, in all his new editions (those of ‘Fixlein,’ +the ‘Preparatory School,’ and ‘Levana,’ are proofs and witnesses<a name="div2Ref_02" href="#div2_02"><sup>[2]</sup></a>), +however he may set to work, hanging up new pictures, turning some of +the old ones’ faces to the wall—marching off some ideas, relieving +them by others—making characters conduct themselves better, or worse, +or hit upon better, or upon worse, ideas, as the case may be,—the +deuce a reviewer takes the least notice of it, or says a word to the +world on the subject. But in this way I learn little, am not told where +I have done pretty well, or the reverse, and am <i>minus</i>, perhaps, some +little bit of praise and encouragement which I may deserve. +</p> + +<p> +This is how the question stands, and several consequences follow as +matters of course; the indifferent class of readers consider the author +incapable of making any critical emendations, while the enthusiastic +class think none are necessary—their common point of agreement being +the supposition that he absorbs and emits the whole thing with the same +natural, matter of course, ease and absence of effort as the Aphides, +the plant-lice, do the honey-dew, which is in such request with the +bees, though, unlike the said bees, he is not very clever at making the +wax for it. +</p> + +<p> +Then there are a good many who think every line should be left in the +condition in which it first flowed, or burst, spontaneously from its +author’s fancy—just as if corrections were not themselves spontaneous +outbursts as well as the other. Other readers prefer to belong to none +of the above factions and consequently belong, to some extent, to all. +Were it my object to express myself briefly, I should merely have to do +so as follows:—firstly, they say, it would be much better if he simply +spoke artlessly out whatever he finds it in his heart to say! and (if +this is just what one happens to have done), secondly, how much better +would be the effect of that which he finds it in that heart of his to +say, and how much it would be improved, were it to be done according to +the canons of taste and criticism! I can express these ideas likewise +in a more roundabout form, as follows:—If a writer curbs himself too +closely, if he thinks less about the strong throb of his heart than +about the delicate arterial network and plexus of taste, and breaks up +its broad stream into fine, minute, dew-drops of the invisible +perspiration of criticism—then they say—“the fact is, that the +thicker and more powerful a jet of water is, the higher it shoots, +penetrating the atmosphere, and overcoming its resistance; whilst a +more delicate jet is dissipated before it gets half as far.” But, when +the author does just the reverse of the above; when he presses out all +his overflowing heart in one gush, and lets the blood-billows flow when +and how they will, then the critics point the <i>following</i> moral—doing +it, however, in a metaphor other than I should have expected of +them—“A work of art is like a paper kite, which rises the higher the +more the boy pulls and holds back the string, but falls the moment he +lets it go.” +</p> + +<p> +We return at last to our book. The most important of the emendations +made upon it are, perhaps, the historical; for, since the first edition +appeared, I have had the good fortune—partly because I have had an +opportunity of visiting and seeing Kuhschnappel itself, the scene of +the story (as was some time since stated in Jean Paul’s letters), +partly from my correspondence with the hero of it himself—of becoming +acquainted with family circumstances and occurrences which, probably, I +could not have got at in any other way, unless I had sat down and +coolly invented them. I have even made prize of some fresh +Leibgeberiana, which I am happy to be able now to communicate to the +public. +</p> + +<p> +The new edition is also improved by the banishment of all those +foreigners of words which occupied places more appropriately to be +filled by natives of the country; also by a critical cleansing away of +all the genitive final s’s of compound words. But really the labour of +sweeping and striking out letters and words all through four long +volumes can be estimated so highly by nobody, not even by Posterity, as +by the sweeper and striker-out himself. +</p> + +<p> +Another of the improvements made in the Second Edition is, that I have +placed both the “Flower-pieces” at the end of the second volume<a name="div2Ref_03" href="#div2_03"><sup>[3]</sup></a> (for +in the former edition they came both at the beginning of the first), +and that it is no longer the first volume, but, much more +appropriately, the second, which closes with the first Fruit-piece. +</p> + +<p> +And lastly, it may, perhaps, be reckoned as one of the minor +improvements, that in the two Flower-pieces—particularly in that of +the Dead Christ—I have not <i>made</i> any improvements, but left +everything as it was, and not attempted to scrape away any of the +golden writing-sand with which I had made the letters a little rough +and illegible. +</p> + +<p> +The above are the principal alterations, concerning which I should be +so glad to be favoured with the opinions of able reviewers, to the +increasing of my information, perhaps also of my reputation. But, as +there could not be a more troublesome business than the comparing of +the old book with the improved one, page by page, as it were, I have +deposited in the school-book shop the printed copy of the old edition, +in which all the writing-ink emendations of the printing-ink, that is +to say, all the places which have been written or stroked through, can +be easily seen at a glance, often half and whole pages done to death, +so that it would really astonish you. Critics not on the spot must, +indeed, content themselves with laying the volumes of each of the +editions into the opposite scales of a grocer’s balance, and then +looking, when they will see how much the new edition outweighs the old. +From my strict and anxious treatment of my Second Edition, then, all +critics may form an idea of my strict and anxious treatment of my +first; they may also form an idea how much I struck out of my +manuscript before printing, when they observe how much I have struck +out after printing. +</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="sc">Dr. Jean Paul Fr. Richter.</span> +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sc">Bayreuth</span>, <i>September</i>, 1817. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<hr class="W10" /> + +<p class="hang1"><a href="#div1Ref_preface1">PREFACE <span class="sc">to the Second Edition</span></a> +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a href="#div1Ref_preface2">PREFACE</a>, with which I was obliged to put Jacob Oehrmann, General +Dealer, to sleep, because I wished to narrate the “Dog Post Days,” +and these present “Flower-Pieces,” &c., &c., to his Daughter +</p> + +<p class="hang2"><a href="#div1Ref_wedded"><span class="sc">Wedded Life, Death, And Marriage of F. S. Siebenkæs.</span></a> +</p> + +<h4><a href="#div1Ref_thorn">A Genuine Thorn Piece.</a></h4> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_book1">BOOK I.</a></h3> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch01">CHAPTER I.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Wedding Day, succeeding a day of respite—The Counterparts—Dish +Quintette in two Courses—Table-talk—Six Arms and Hands. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch02">CHAPTER II.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Home Fun—Sundry formal Calls—The Newspaper Article—A Love +Quarrel, and a few hard words—Antipathetic ink on the wall—Friendship +of the Satirists—Government of Kuhschnappel. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch02a"><span class="sc">Appendix to Chapter II.</span></a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Government of the Imperial Market Borough of Kuhschnappel. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch03">CHAPTER III.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Lenette’s Honeymoon—Book Brewing—Schulrath Stiefel—Mr. +Everard—A Day before the Fair—The Red Cow—St. Michael’s Fair—The +Beggars’ Opera—Diabolical Temptation in the Wilderness, or +the Mannikin of Fashion—Autumn Joys—A New Labyrinth. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch04">CHAPTER IV.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Matrimonial Partie à la Guerre—Letter to that Hair Collector, +the Venner—Self-deceptions—Adam’s Marriage Sermon—Shadowing +and Over-shadowing. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a href="#div1Ref_endpref"><span class="sc">End of the Preface and of the First Book.</span></a> +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +<p class="hang1"><a href="#div1Ref_pref234">PREFACE <span class="sc">to the Second, Third and Fourth Books.</span></a> +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a href="#div1Ref_prefauthor">PREFACE <span class="sc">by the Author of ‘Hesperus’.</span></a> +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_book2">BOOK II.</a></h3> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch05">CHAPTER V.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Broom and the Besom as Passion Implements—The Importance of a +Bookwriter—Diplomatic Negotiations and Discussions on the subject +of Candle Snuffing—The Pewter Cupboard—Domestic Hardships and +Enjoyments. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch06">CHAPTER VI.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Matrimonial Jars—Extra Leaflet on the Loquacity of Women—More +Pledging—The Mortar and the Snuff-mill—A Scholar’s Kiss—On +the Consolations of Humanity. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch06c"><span class="sc">Continuation and Conclusion Of Chapter VI.</span></a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Checked Calico Dress—More Pledges—Christian Neglect of the +Study of Judaism—A Helping Arm (of Leather) stretched forth from +the Clouds—The Auction. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch07">CHAPTER VII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Shooting-Match—Rosa’s Autumnal Campaign—Considerations +concerning Curses, Kisses, and the Militia. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Scruples as to Payment of Debts—The Rich Pauper’s Sunday +Throne-ceremonial—Artificial Flowers on the Grave—New Thistle +Seedlings of Contention. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_flower1">First Flower Piece.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Dead Christ proclaims that there is no God. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_flower2">Second Flower piece.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Dream within a Dream. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_book3">BOOK III.</a></h3> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch09">CHAPTER IX.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Potato War with Women—and with Men—A Walk in December—Tinder +for Jealousy—A War of Succession on the subject of a piece of +checked calico—Rupture with Stiefel—Sad Evening Music. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch10">CHAPTER X.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Lonely New-Year’s Day—The Learned Schalaster—Wooden-leg of +Appeal—Chamber Postal Delivery—The 11th of February, and +Birth-day of the year 1786. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Leibgeber’s Disquisition on Fame—Firmian’s “Evening Paper”. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch12">CHAPTER XII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Flight out of Egypt—The Glories of Travel?—The Unknown +Bayreuth—Baptism in a Storm—Nathalie and the Hermitage—The +most important Conversation in all this Book—An Evening of +Friendship. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Clock of Human Beings—A Cold Shoulder—The Venner. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">A Lover’s Dismissal—Fantaisie—The Child with the Bouquet—The +Eden of the Night, and the Angel at the Gate of Paradise. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_fruit1">First Fruit Piece.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Letter of Dr. Victor to Cato the Elder, on the Conversion of <i>I</i> +into <i>Thou</i>, <i>He</i>, <i>She</i>, <i>Ye</i>, and <i>They</i>; or the +Feast of +Kindness of the 20th March. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a href="#div1Ref_jeanps"><span class="sc">Postscript by Jean Paul.</span></a> +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_book4">BOOK IV.</a></h3> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch15">CHAPTER XV.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Rosa von Meyern—Tone-Echoes and After-Breezes from the loveliest +of all Nights—Letters of Nathalie and Firmian—Table-talk by +Leibgeber. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Homeward Journey, with all its Pleasures—The Arrival at Home. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Butterfly Rosa in the Form of Mining Caterpillar—Thorn-crowns, +and Thistle-heads of Jealousy. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">After-Summer of Marriage—Preparations for Death. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Apparition—Homecoming of the Storms in August, or the last +Quarrel—The Raiment of the Children of Israel. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch20">CHAPTER XX.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Apoplexy—The President of the Board of Health—The +Notary-Public—The last Will and Testament—The Knight’s Move—Revel, +the Morning Preacher—The Second Apoplectic Attack. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Dr. Œlhafen and Medical Boot and Shoemaking—The Burial +Society—A Death’s Head in the Saddle—Frederick II. and his Funeral +Oration. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Journey through Fantaisie—Re-union on the Bindlocher +Mountain—Berneck—Man-doubling—Gefrees—Exchange of +Clothes—Münchberg—Solo-whistling—Hof—The Stone of +Gladness and Double-parting. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">Days in Vaduz—Nathalie’s Letter—A New Year’s Wish—Wilderness +of Destiny and the Heart. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">News from Kuhschnappel—Woman’s Anticlimax—Opening of the Seventh +Seal. +</p> + +<h3><a href="#div1Ref_ch25">CHAPTER XXV., AND LAST.</a></h3> + +<p class="hang1">The Journey—The Churchyard—The Spectre—The End of the Trouble, +and of the Book. +</p> + +<hr /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_preface2"></a>PREFACE,</h2> + +<p class="hang1">WITH WHICH I WAS OBLIGED TO PUT JACOB OEHRMANN, GENERAL DEALER, TO +SLEEP, BECAUSE I WISHED TO NARRATE THE “DOG POST DAYS”<a name="div2Ref_04" href="#div2_04"><sup>[4]</sup></a> AND +THESE PRESENT “FLOWER-PIECES,” &C., &C., TO HIS DAUGHTER. +</p> + +<p> +On Christmas Eve of 1794, when I came from the publishers of the two +works in question, and from Berlin, to the town of Scheerau, I went +straight from the mail coach to the house of Mr. Jacob Oehrmann (whose +law affairs I had formerly attended to), having with me letters from +Vienna which might be of considerable service to him. A child can see +at a glance that at that time there was no idea of anything connected +with such a matter as a Preface in my head. It was very cold—being the +24th of December—the street lamps were lighted, and I was frozen as +stiff as the fawn which had been my fellow-passenger (a “blind” one<a name="div2Ref_05" href="#div2_05"><sup>[5]</sup></a>), +by the coach. In the shop itself, which was full of draughts and other +kinds of wind, it was impossible for a preface-maker of any sense, +such as myself, to set to work, because there was a young lady +preface-maker—Oehrmann’s daughter and shop-girl—already at work making +oral prefaces to the little books she was selling—Christmas almanacs +of the best of all kinds—duodecimo books, printed on unsized paper +indeed, but full of real fragments of the golden and silver +ages—I mean, the little books of mottoes, all gold and silver leaf, +with which the blessed Christmas gilds its gifts like the autumn, or +silvers them over like the winter. I don’t blame the poor shop-wench +that, besieged as she was by such a crowd of Christmas Eve customers, +she hardly had a nod to throw at me, old acquaintance as I was; and, +although I had only that moment arrived from Berlin, she showed me in +to her father at once. +</p> + +<p> +All was in a glow in there, Jacob Oehrmann as well as his +counting-house. He, too, was sitting over a book, not as a +preface-maker, however, but as a registrator and epitomator; he was +balancing his ledger. He had added up his balance-sheet twice over +already, but, to his horror, the credit side was always a Swiss +oertlein (that is, 13½ kreuzers, Zürich currency) more than the debit +side. The man’s attention was wholly fixed upon the driving-wheel of +the calculating machine inside his head; he hardly noticed me, well as +he knew me, and though I had Vienna letters. To mercantile people, who, +like the carriers they employ, are at home all the world over, and to +whom the remotest trading powers are daily sending ambassadors and +envoyés, namely, commercial travellers—to them, I say, it makes little +difference whether it be Berlin, Boston, or Byzance, that one happens +to arrive from. +</p> + +<p> +Being well accustomed to this commercial indifference to fellow +mortals, I stood quietly by the fire, and had my thoughts, which shall +here be made the reader’s property. +</p> + +<p> +I cogitated, as I stood at the fire, on the subject of the public in +general, and found that I could divide it, like man himself, into three +parts—into the Buying-public, the Reading-public, and the Art-public, +just as speculative persons have assumed that man consists of Body, +Soul, and Spirit. The Body, or Buying-public, which consists of +scholars by trade, professional teachers, and people engaged in +business—that true <i>corpus callosum</i> of the German empire—buys and +uses the very biggest and most corpulent books (works of <i>body</i>), and +deals with them as women do with cookery books, it opens them and +consults them in order to be guided by them. In the eyes of this class +the world contains two kinds of utter idiots, differing from each other +only in the direction taken by their crack-brained fancies, those of +the one going too much downward, those of the other too much upward; in +a word, philosophers and poets. Naudæus, in his ‘Enumeration of the +Learned Men who were supposed to be Necromancers in the Middle Ages,’ +has admirably remarked that this never was the case with jurists or +theologians, but always with philosophers. It is the case to this day +with the wise of the world, only that, the noble idea of “wizard” and +“witchmaster,”—whose <i>spiritus rector</i> and grand master seems to have +been the devil himself—having got degraded to a name applied to great +and clever men and conjurors, the philosopher must be content to put up +with the latter signification of the term. Poets are in a more pitiable +case still; the philosopher is a member of the fourth faculty, has +recognised official positions—can lecture on his own subjects; but the +poet is nothing at all, holds no state appointment—(if he did he would +no longer be “born,” he would be “made” by the Imperial Chancery), and +people who can criticise him and pass their opinions upon him throw it +in his teeth without ceremony that he makes plentiful use of +expressions which are current neither in commerce, nor in synodal +edicts, nor in general regulations, nor in decisions of the high court +of justiciary, nor in medical opinions or histories of diseases—and +that he visibly walks on stilts, is turgid and bombastic, and never +<i>copious</i> enough or <i>condensed</i> enough. At the same time, I at once +admit that, in the rank thus assigned to the poet, he is treated very +much as the nightingale was by Linnæus, which (as he was not taking its +song into account) he, no doubt properly, classed among the funny, +jerking water-wagtails. +</p> + +<p> +The second part of the public, the Soul, the Reading-public, is +composed of girls, lads, and idle persons in general. I shall praise it +in the sequel; it reads us all, at any rate, and skips obscure pages, +where there’s nothing but talk and argument, sticking, like a just and +upright judge, or historical inquirer, to matters of pure fact. +</p> + +<p> +The Art-public, the Spirit, I might, perhaps, leave altogether out of +consideration; the few who have a taste, not only for all kinds of +taste, and for the taste of all nations, but for higher, almost +cosmopolitan beauties, such as Herder, Goethe, Lessing, Wieland and one +or two more—an author has little need to trouble himself about <i>their</i> +votes, they are in such a minority, and moreover, they don’t read him. +At all events, they don’t deserve the dedication with which I, at +the fireside, came to the conclusion that I would bribe the great +Buying-public, which is, of course, what keeps the book trade going. I +resolved, in fact, regularly to dedicate my ‘Hesperus,’ or the +‘Kuhschnappler Siebenkæs,’ to Jacob Oehrmann; and through him, as it +were, to the Buying-public. To wit, in this way:— +</p> + +<p> +Jacob Oehrmann is not a man to be despised, I can tell you. He served +as porter of the Stock Exchange in Amsterdam for four years, and rang +the Exchange bell from 11.45 till 12 o’clock. Soon after this, by +scraping and pinching, he <i>became</i> a “pretty rich house” (though he +<i>kept</i> a very poor one), and rose to the dignity of seal-keeper of a +whole collection of knightly seals pasted on to noble, escheated, +promises to pay. True, like celebrated authors, he assumed no municipal +offices, preferring to do nothing but write; but the town militia of +Scheerau, whose hearts are always in the right place (that is to say, +the safest), and who bravely exhibit themselves to passing troops as a +watchful corps of <i>observation</i>, insisted upon making him their +captain, though he would have been quite content to have been nothing +but their cloth contractor. He is honest enough, particularly in his +dealings with the mercantile world; and, far from burning the laws of +the Church, like Luther, all he burns even of the municipal law is a +title or two of the Seventh Commandment, indeed, he only <i>makes</i> a +<i>beginning</i> at burning them, as the Vienna censorship does with +prohibited books; and even this only in the cases of carriers, debtors, +and people of rank. Before a man of this stamp I can, without any +qualms of conscience, burn a little sweet-smelling incense, and make +his Dutch face appear magnified, to some extent, like a spectre’s +through magic vapour. +</p> + +<p> +Now I thought I should portray, in his likeness, some of the more +striking features of the great Buying-public; for he is a sort of +portable miniature of it—like itself, he cares only for bread-studies, +and beer-studies, for no talk but table-talk, no literature but +politics—he knows that the magnet was only created to hold up his +shop-door key if he chooses to stick it on to it—the tourmaline only +to collect his tobacco ashes, his daughter Pauline to take the place of +both (although she attracts stronger things, and with greater +attractive power than either)—he knows no higher thing in the world +than bread, and detests the town painter, who uses it to rub out pencil +marks with. He and his three sons, who are immured in three of the +Hanse towns, read or write no other, and no less important, books than +the waste-book and the ledger. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“May I be d—d,” thought I, as I was warming myself at the stove, “if I +can paint the Buying-public to greater perfection than under the name +of Jacob Oehrmann, who is but a twig, or fibre, of it; but then it +couldn’t possibly know what I meant” it occurred to me; and on account +of this error in my calculations, I have to-day hit upon quite another +plan. +</p> + +<p> +Just as I had committed my error the daughter came in, rectified her +father’s, and brought out the balance correctly. Oehrmann looked at me +now, and became to some extent conscious of my existence; and, on my +presenting the Vienna epistles by way of credentials (epistles of this +kind are more to him than poetical, or St. Pauline, epistles)—from +being a mere fresco figure on the wall, as I had been up to that time, +I became a something possessed of a mind and a stomach, and I was asked +(together with the latter) to stay to supper. +</p> + +<p> +Now, although the critics may set all the cliques and circles of +Germany about my ears—aye, and have a new Turkish bell cast specially +for the purpose—I mean to make a clean breast of it here, and state in +plain words that it was solely on account of the daughter that I came, +and that I stayed, there. I knew that the darling would have read all +my recent books, if the old man had given her time to do it; and for +that very reason it was impossible for me to blink the fact that it was +incumbent upon me as a simple duty to talk, if not to sing, her father +to sleep, and then tell his daughter all that I had been telling the +world, though the agency of the press. This, as of course you perceive, +was why I usually came there to have a talk on the evenings of his +foreign mail days, when it didn’t take much to put him to sleep. +</p> + +<p> +On the Christmas Eve, then, what I had to do was to condense and +abridge my “45 Dog Post Days” into the space of about the same number +of minutes; a longish business, rendering a sleep of no brief duration +necessary. +</p> + +<p> +I wish Messrs. the Editors and Reviewers, who find much to blame in +this proceeding of mine, could have just sat down, for once in their +lives, on the sofa beside my namesake <span class="sc">Johanna Paulina</span>; they would have +related to her most of my biographical histories in those cleverly +epitomised forms in which they communicate them in their magazines and +papers to audiences of a very different type. They would have been +beside themselves with rapture at the truth and felicity of her +remarks, at the natural, unaffected, simplicity and sincerity of her +manner, at the innocence of her heart, and at her lively sense of +humour, and they would have taken hold of her hand, and cried “let the +author treat us to comedies half as delicious as this one which is +sitting beside us now, and he is the man for us.” Indeed, had these +gentlemen, the editors and reviewers, got to know a little more than +they do about the art of briefly extracting the pith and marrow of a +book, and had they been able to move Pauline just a little more than I +think such great critical functionaries could be expected to do; and +had they then seen, or more properly, nearly <i>lost</i> sight of, that +gentle face of hers as it melted away in a dew of tears (because girls +and gold are the <i>softer</i> and the more <i>impressionable</i> the <i>purer</i> +they are), and had they, as of course they would have done, in the +heavenliness of their emotion, well-nigh clean forgotten themselves, +and the snoring father—— +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Good gracious! I have got into a tremendous state over it myself, and +shall keep the preface till to-morrow. It is clear that it must be gone +on with in a calmer mood. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I thought I might take it for granted that the master of the house +would have tired himself so much with letter-writing on the Christmas +Eve, that all that would be wanted to put him to sleep would be some +person who should hasten the process by talking in a long-winded and +tedious style. I considered myself to be that person. However, at +first, while supper was going on, I only introduced subjects which he +would understand. While he was plying his spoon and fork, and till +grace had been said, a sleep of any duration was more than could be +expected of him. Wherefore I entertained him with matter of interest +and amusement, such as my blind fellow-passenger (the fawn), one or two +stoppages of payment—my opinions on the French War, and the high +prices of everything—that Frederick Street, Berlin, was half a mile in +length—that there was great freedom, both of the press and of trade, +in that city. I also mentioned that in most parts of Germany which I +had visited, I had found that the beggar boys were the “revising +barristers” of and “lodgers of appeals” against the newspaper writers; +that is to say, that the newspaper makers bring to life, with their +ink, the people who are killed in battle, and are able to avail +themselves of these resurrected ones in the next “affaire;” whilst the +soldiers’ children, on the other hand, like to kill their fathers and +then beg upon the lists of killed: they shoot their fathers dead for a +halfpenny each, and the newspaper evangelists bring them to life again +for a penny. And thus these two classes of the community are, in a +beautiful manner, by reciprocity of lying, the one the antidote to the +other. This is the reason why neither a newspaper writer, nor an +orthographer, can strictly adhere to Klopstock’s orthographical rule, +only to <i>write</i> what you <i>hear</i>. +</p> + +<p> +When the cloth was off, I saw that it was time for me to set my foot to +work at the rocking of Captain Oehrmann’s cradle. My ‘Hesperus’ is too +big a book. On other occasions I should have had time enough. On these +occasions all I had to do to get the great Dutch tulip to close its +petals in sleep was, to begin with wars and rumours of wars—then +introduce the Law of Nature, or rather the <i>Laws</i> of Nature, seeing +that every fair and every war provides a fresh supply—from this point +I had but a short step to arrive at the most sublime axioms of moral +science, thus dipping the merchant before he knew where he was into the +deepest centre of the health-giving mineral well of truth. Or I lighted +up sundry new systems (of my own invention), held them under his nose, +attacked and refuted them, benumbing and narcotising him with the smoke +till he fell down senseless. Then came freedom! Then his daughter and I +would open the window to the stars and the flowers outside, while I +placed before the poor famished soul a rich supply of the loveliest +poetical honey-bearing blossoms. Such had been my process on previous +occasions. But this evening I took a shorter path. As soon as grace was +said, I got as near as I could to complete unintelligibility, and +proposed to the house of business of Oehrmann’s soul (his body) the +following query: whether there were not more Kartesians than Newtonists +among the princes of Germany. “I do not mean as regards the animal +world,” I continued slowly and tediously. “Kartesius, as we know, is of +opinion that the animals are insentient machines, and consequently, +man, the noblest of animals, would be improperly comprehended in this +dictum; what my meaning is, and what I want to know, is this—do not +the majority (of the princes of Germany) consider that the essentiality +of a realm consists in <span class="sc">Extension</span>, as Kartesius holds that of matter to +do, only the minority of them holding, as Newton (a greater man) does +of matter, that its essentiality consists in <span class="sc">Solidity</span>.” +</p> + +<p> +He terrified me by answering with the greatest liveliness, and as broad +awake as you please, “There are only two of them that can pay their +way—the Prince of Flachsenfingen and the Prince of——” +</p> + +<p> +At this point his daughter placed a basket of clothes come from the +wash upon the table, and a little box of letters upon the basket, and +set to work printing her brothers’ names at full length upon their +shirts. As she took out of the basket a tall white festival tiara for +her father, and took away from him the base Saturday cowl which he had +on, I was incited to become as obscure and as long-winded as the +night-cap and my own designs called upon me to be. +</p> + +<p> +Now, as there is nothing about which he is so utterly indifferent as my +books, and polite literature in all its branches, I determined to +settle him, once for all, with this detested stuff. I succeeded in +pumping out what follows. +</p> + +<p> +“I almost fear, Captain, that you must have rather wondered that I have +never enabled you to make acquaintance in anything like a very detailed +or explicit manner with my two latest <i>opuscula</i>, or little works; the +elder of the two is, curiously enough, called ‘Dog Post Days,’ and the +later ‘Flower-pieces.’ Perhaps, if I just give you a slight idea +to-night of the principal points of my forty-five Dog Post Days, and +then fetch up with the Flower-pieces this day week, I shall be doing a +little towards making amends for my negligence. Of course, it’s my +fault alone, and nobody else’s, if you find you don’t quite know what +the first of the two may be <i>about</i>—whether you are to suppose it to +be a work on heraldry or on insects—or a dictionary of some particular +dialect—or an ancient codex—or a Lexicon Homericum—or a collection +of inaugural disputations—or a ready reckoner—or an epic poem—or a +volume of funeral sermons. It really <i>is</i> nothing but an interesting +story, with threads of all the above subjects woven into it, however. I +should be very glad myself, Captain, if it were better than it is; and +particularly I wish it were written with that degree of lucidity that +one could half read it, and half compose it even, in his sleep. I do +not know, Captain, quite what your canons of criticism may be, and +hence I cannot say whether your taste is British or Greek. I must admit +that I shrewdly suspect that it is not much in the book’s favour that +there are parts of it to be found—I hope not very many—in which there +are more meanings than one, of all kinds of metaphors and flowery +styles hashed up together, or an outside semblance of gravity with no +reality behind it, but only mere fun (you see Germans insist upon a +businesslike style), and (which I am most of all afraid is the case), +though the book is of some considerable extent, my attempts at +imitating the romances of chivalry so popular in the present day (which +so often <i>seem</i> as if they really must have been written by the old +<i>artless</i> knights themselves, fellows who were better at wielding the +heavy two-handed sword than the light goose quill)—that my attempts, I +say, at imitating these romances have scarcely been attended with that +amount of success at which I have aimed at attaining. Perhaps, too, I +might oftener have offended the modesty and the ears of the ladies, as +many men of the world have thought I might; for, indeed, books which do +not offend the ears of the great—but only those of the chaste—are not +considered the most objectionable.” +</p> + +<p> +I saw here, when too late, that I had struck on a subject which +enlivened him up prodigiously. I did, indeed, instantly make a jump to +a quite different topic, saying, “it is probably the safest way of all, +to have improper books deposited in <i>public</i> libraries, where the +librarians are of the usual type, because the rudeness of their manners +and their disagreeable behaviour, does more to prevent these books from +being read than an edict of the censorship.” But Jacobus would speak +out his thought, “Pauline, don’t let me forget that the woman Stenzin +hasn’t paid her fine yet.” +</p> + +<p> +It was uncommonly annoying that, just when I got sleep lured on to +within a step or two of him, the Captain should all of a sudden draw +his trigger and let off a thing calculated to blow all my sleeping +powder to the four winds of heaven. There is nobody more difficult to +weary than a person who wearies everybody else. I would rather +undertake to weary out a lady who happens to have nothing to do in five +minutes’ time, than a man of business in as many hours. +</p> + +<p> +Pauline, the darling, anxious to hear the stories which I had +accompanied in manuscript to Berlin, put slowly into my hand one by one +the following letters from her letterbox: “STORY”—i. e. she wanted to +be told the “Dog Post Days” that evening. +</p> + +<p> +So I set to work again, and, with a sigh, began in this way: “The fact +is, Mr. Oehrmann, that your humble servant here will soon be setting +letters of this sort flying about in Berlin, by his new book, and my +‘Post Days’ may be printed on shirts quite as fine as those your sons’ +names are being printed upon, if the people happen to have made their +paper from such. But, indeed, I must admit to you that as I was sitting +on the coach on my way to Berlin, with my right foot under my +manuscripts, and my left beneath a bale of petitions on their way to +the Prince of Scheerau, with the army, the only thing I had in the way +of a comforting thought was this very natural one, ‘Devil make a better +of it all!’ Only he’s just the very last person to <i>do it</i>. For, good +heavens! in an age like this present age of ours, when the instruments +of universal world history are only <i>being tuned</i> in the orchestra +before the concert begins, that is to say, are all grumbling and +squeaking together in confusion (which was why on one occasion the +tuning of the orchestra pleased a Morocco Ambassador at Vienna much +better than the opera itself)—in such an age, when it is so hard to +tell the coward from the brave man—him who lets everything go as it +pleases from him who strives to do something great and good—those who +are withering up from those who are flourishing and promising fruit, +just as in winter the fruit-bearing trees look much the same as the +dead ones—in such an age, there is only one consolation for an author, +one which I have not yet spoken of to-night, and it is this: that, +after all, though it be an age in which the nobler kinds of virtue, +love, and freedom, are the rarest of Phœnixes and birds of the sun, +he can manage to put up with it, and can go on drawing vivid pictures +and writing lively descriptions of all the birds in question, until +they wing their way to us in the body. Doubtless, when the originals of +the pictures <i>have</i> fairly come and taken up their abode here on earth, +then will all our panegyrics of them be out of place, and loathsome to +the palate, and a mere threshing of empty straw. People who are +<i>incapable of business</i> can work for the press.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s work, and there’s work,” the merchant, wide awake, struck in; +“it all depends—Now TRADE keeps a man; but book-writing isn’t much +better than spinning cotton, and spinning is next door to begging—not +meaning anything personal to yourself. But all the broken-down +book-keepers and bankrupt tradesmen take to the making of +books—arithmetic books, and so on.” +</p> + +<p> +The public sees what a poor opinion this shopkeeper-captain had of me, +because <i>my</i> business was only the making of books, though in old days +I had been continually running in to him day and night, as notary +depute, for the protesting of bills. I know the sort of view many +people take of the <i>convenances</i> of society; but I think anyone on +earth will consider that, after being treated in this style, I was to +be excused for going quite wild on the spot, and responding to the +fellow’s impertinence, although he was no longer quite in his five +senses, in no less formidable a manner than by repeating, accurately +and without abridgment, my “extra leaflets” from my ‘Hesperus.’ +</p> + +<p> +This, of course, was bound to put him to death—sleep, I mean. +</p> + +<p> +And then thousands of propitious stars arose for the daughter and the +author—then commenced our feast of unleavened bread—then I could sit +down with her at the front window, and tell her all that which the +public has for some time had in its hands. Truly there can be nothing +sweeter than to some kind tender heart, hemmed in on all sides and +besieged by sermons—which cannot refresh itself at so much as a +birthday ball, were it only the superintendent’s and his wife’s, nor +with a novel, though its author be the family legal adviser: to such a +beleaguered famishing heart, I say, it is more delicious than virgin +honey to march up with a strong army of relief, and, taking hold of +some mesh in the nun’s veil which is over the soul, tear it wider, let +her peep through and look out at the glimmer of some flowery eastern +land—to wile the tears of her dreams to her waking eyes—to lift her +beyond her own longings, and at a stroke set free the fond tender +heart, long heavy with yearning, and bound in bitter slavery—to set it +free, and to rock it softly up and down in the fresh spring breeze of +poesy, while the dewy warmth gives birth to flowers therein of fairer +growth than those of the country round. +</p> + +<p> +I had just finished by one o’clock. I had taken only three hours to the +three volumes of my story, because I had torn out all the “extra +leaves.” “If the father is the Buying-public, the daughter is the +Reading-public, and we must not plague her with anything that’s not +purely historical,” I said, and sacrificed my most precious +digressions, for which, moreover, such an enchanting neighbourhood is +not quite the proper soil. +</p> + +<p> +Then the old man coughed, got up from his chair, asked what o’clock it +was, wished me good night, and opening the door saw me out (thereby +depriving me of a good one), and saw me no more till that night week, +on New Year’s Eve. +</p> + +<p> +My readers will remember that I had promised to come on that evening, +because I had to make a brief report to my client concerning my +“Flower-pieces”—this very book. +</p> + +<p> +I assure the gentle reader that I shall report the events of the +evening exactly as they occurred. +</p> + +<p> +I appeared again, then, on the last evening of the year 1794, on the +red waves of which so many bodies, bled to death, were borne away to +the Ocean of Eternity. My client received me with a coldness which I +attributed partly to that of the temperature outside (for both men and +wolves are most ferocious in hard frost), partly to the Vienna letters +which I had—NOT with me; and on the whole, I had but little to say to +the fellow on this occasion. As, besides, I was going to leave Scheerau +on the New Year’s Day by the Thursday coach, and was very anxious to +lay before my dear Pauline some more <i>Paulina</i>, namely these sketches, +because I knew that whatever other wares she might find upon her +counter, these wouldn’t be among them—I consider that no editor who +has any principles whatever can possibly get into a passion at my +<i>having</i> duly appeared. Let any hot-headed person of the sort just +listen to the plan I had. I wanted first to give to this silent +soul-flower the <span class="sc">Flower-pieces</span>, two dreams made of flowers put together +mosaic-fashion—next the Thorn-pieces,<a name="div2Ref_06" href="#div2_06"><sup>[6]</sup></a> from which I had to break +away the thorns, that is, the satires, so that nothing remained but a +mere curious story and lastly, the Fruit-piece was to be served up +last, as it is in the book itself, by way of dessert; and in this ripe +fruit (from which I had previously orally expressed all the chilling +ice-apple juice of philosophy, which the press has, however, left in) I +meant to appear at the end of the day, myself as Appleworm. This would +have led by easy steps to my departure or farewell; for I did not +know whether I should ever again see or hear of Pauline, this +flower-polypus, stretching out eyeless, palpitating, tentacula, from +mere <span class="sc2">INSTINCT</span> towards the <span class="sc2">LIGHT</span>. With the old decayed wood on which the +polyp was blooming I, of course, having no Vienna letters, had little +to do. +</p> + +<p> +But near as it was to the time for wishing new year’s wishes, the old +year was doomed to end with wishes unfulfilled. +</p> + +<p> +Yet I have little to blame myself about; for, as soon as ever I came +in, I did my best to tire out the live East India House and put him to +sleep, and I continued to do so while he sat there. The only agreeable +remarks I made to him were, that when he had said some insulting things +about my successor, his present legal adviser, I extended them so as to +apply them to the legal profession in general, thus elevating the mere +pasquinade into the nobler satire: “I always picture lawyers and +clients as two strings of people with buckets or purses near a kind of +engine for quenching money thirst—the one row, the clients, always +passing away with their buckets, or purses, empty, and the other row +standing and handing each other buckets or purses full,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +I think it was not otherwise than on purpose, that I painted to him the +great Buying-public with lineaments much like his own—for he is a +small Buying-public, only a few feet long and broad. In fact, I made on +him an experiment to ascertain what the Buying-public itself would say +to the following ideas. +</p> + +<p> +“The public of the present day, Captain, is gradually getting to be a +flourishing North India Company, and, it seems to me, it will soon +rival the Dutch, amongst whom butter and books are articles of <i>export</i> +trade only; the attic salt <i>they</i> have a taste for, is that which +<span class="sc">Benkelszoon</span> used for pickling fish with. Though they have provided +Erasmus, in consideration of <i>his</i> salt (of a better quality), with a +statue (he never <i>ate</i> salt, by the way), yet I think this was +excusable in them, when we remember that they first had one erected to +the fish-curer in question. Even <span class="sc">Campe</span>, who by no means classes the +inventors of the spinning-wheel and of Brunswick beer beneath the +constructors and brewers of epic poems, will coincide with me when I +say that the German is really being made something of at the present +day; that he is positively becoming a serious, solid, well-grounded +fellow—a tradesman, a man of business; a man getting past his youthful +follies, who knows <i>edible</i> from <i>cogitable</i> matter (when he sees it), +and can winnow out the latter from the former; who can distinguish the +printer from the publisher, and the bookseller (as the more important) +from both; he is becoming a speculative individual who, like the hens +who run from a harp string with fox-gut, can’t bear the noise of +any poet’s harp whatever, were it strung with the harper’s own +heart-strings—and who will soon come to suffer no pictorial art to +exist, except upon bales of merchandise,<a name="div2Ref_07" href="#div2_07"><sup>[7]</sup></a> nor any printing except +calico-printing.” +</p> + +<p> +Here I saw, to my amazement, that the merchant was asleep already, and +had shut the window-shutters of his senses. I was a good deal annoyed +that I had been standing in awe of him, as well as talking to him, all +this time unnecessarily; I had been playing the part of the Devil, and +he that of King Solomon, supposed by the evil one to be alive when he +was dead.<a name="div2Ref_08" href="#div2_08"><sup>[8]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Meantime, with the view of not waking him up by means of a sudden +change of key, I went on talking to him as if nothing had happened, +speaking to him all the time I was slipping away from him further and +further towards the window with an exceedingly gradual <i>diminuendo</i> of +my tone, as follows:—“And of such a public as this, I quite expect +that a time will come when it will value shoe leather much above +altar-pieces,<a name="div2Ref_09" href="#div2_09"><sup>[9]</sup></a> and that, when the moral and philosophical credit of +any philosopher chances to be in question, its first inquiry of all +will be, ‘is the fellow <i>solvent</i>?’ And further, my beloved listener (I +continued in the same tone, so as not to run the risk of waking the +sleeper by any change in the <i>kind</i> of sound), it is to be hoped and +expected that I shall now have an opportunity of going through, for +your entertainment, my Flower-pieces, which have not even been +committed to paper as yet, and which I can quite easily finish this +evening, if <i>he</i> (father Jacobus) will have the goodness to sleep long +enough.” +</p> + +<p> +I commenced, accordingly, as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +P.S. But it would be too utterly ridiculous altogether, if I were to +have the whole of the Flower and Thorn pieces, which are all in the +book itself, printed over again in the <i>preface</i>! At the end of book +the first, however, I shall give the continuation and conclusion of +this preface, and of the New Year’s Eve, and shall then go on with the +second book, so that it may be ready for the Easter fair. +</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="sc">Jean Paul Fr. Richter.</span> +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sc">Hof</span>, <i>7th November</i>, 1796. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_wedded"></a>WEDDED LIFE, DEATH AND MARRIAGE</h2> + +<h4>OF</h4> + +<h3>F. S. SIEBENKÆS,</h3> + +<h4><span class="sc">Parish Advocate in the royal burgh of Kuhschnappel.</span></h4> + +<hr class="W10" /> + +<h3><a name="div1Ref_thorn"></a>A GENUINE THORN PIECE.</h3> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_book1"></a>BOOK I.</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch01"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<p class="center">A WEDDING DAY, SUCCEEDING A DAY OF RESPITE—THE COUNTERPARTS—DISH +QUINTETTE IN TWO COURSES—TABLE-TALK—SIX ARMS AND HANDS. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs, parish advocate<a name="div2Ref_10" href="#div2_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> for the royal borough of Kuhschnappel, +had spent the whole of Monday at his attic-window watching for his wife +that was to be, who had been expected to arrive from Augspurg a little +before service-time, so as to get a sip of something warm before going +to church for the wedding. +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath of the place, happening to be returning from Augspurg, +had promised to bring the bride with him as return cargo, strapping her +wedding outfit on to his trunk behind. +</p> + +<p> +She was an Augspurger by birth—only daughter of the deceased +Engelkraut, clerk of the Lutheran Council—and she lived in the +Fuggery, in a roomy mansion which was probably bigger than many +drawing-rooms are. She was by no means portionless, for she lived by +her own work, not on other people’s, as penisoned court-ladies’-maids +do. She had all the newest fashions in bonnets and other headgear in +her hands earlier than the richest ladies of the neighbourhood, albeit +in such miniature editions that not even a duck could have got them on; +and she erected edifices for the female head at a few days’ notice, on +a large scale, after these miniature sketches and small-scale plans of +them. +</p> + +<p> +All that Siebenkæs did during his long wait was to depose on oath (more +than once) that it was the devil who invented <i>seeking</i>, and his +grandmother who devised <i>waiting</i>. At length, while it was still pretty +early, came, not the bride, but a night post from Augspurg, with an +epistle from the Schulrath to say that he and the lady “could +not possibly arrive before Tuesday. She was still busy at her +wedding-clothes, and he in the libraries of the ex-Jesuits, and of +Privy Councillor Zopf, and (among the antiquities) at the city gates.” +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs’s butterfly-proboscis, however, found plenty of open honey +cells in every blue thistle blossom of his fate; he could now, on this +idle Monday, make a final application of the arm file and agate +burnisher to his room, brush out the dust and the writing-sand with the +feather of a quill from his table, rout out the accumulations of bits +of paper and other rubbish from behind the mirror, wash, with +unspeakable labour, the white porcelain inkstand into a more dazzling +whiteness, and bring the butter-boat and the coffee-pot into a more +advanced and prominent position (drawing them up in rank and file on +the cupboard), and polish the brass nails on the grandfather’s leather +arm-chair till they shone again. This new temple-purification of his +chamber he undertook merely by way of something to do; for a scholar +considers the mere <i>arranging</i> of his books and papers to <i>be</i> a +purification as of the temple, at least so maintained the parish +advocate, saying further, “orderliness is, properly defined, nothing +but a happy knack which people acquire of putting a thing for twenty +years in the <i>old</i> place, let that place be where it will.” +</p> + +<p> +Not only was he tenant of a pleasant room, but also of a long red +dining-table, which he had hired and placed beside a commoner one; also +of some high-backed arm-chairs: moreover the landlords or proprietors +of the furniture and of the lodgings (who all lived in the house) had +all been invited by him to dinner on this his play Monday, which was an +excellent arrangement, inasmuch as—most of the people of the house +being working-men—their play Monday and his fell together; for it was +only the landlord who was anything superior, and he was a wig-maker. +</p> + +<p> +I should have had cause to feel ashamed of myself had I gone and used +my precious historical colours in portraying a mere advocate of the +poor (a fit candidate for his <i>own</i> services in that capacity). But I +have had access to the documents and accounts relating to my hero’s +guardianship during his minority, and from these I can prove, at any +hour, in a court of justice, that he was a man worth at least 1200 +Rhenish guldens (<i>i.e</i>. 100<i>l</i>.), to say nothing of the interest. +Only, +unfortunately, the study of the ancients, added to his own natural turn +of mind, had endowed him with an invincible contempt for money, that +metallic mainspring of the machinery of our human existence, that dial +plate on which our value is read off, although people of sense, +tradespeople for example, have quite as high an opinion of the man who +acquires, as of him who gets rid of it; just as a person who is +electrified gets a shining glory round his head whether the fluid be +passing into or out of him. Indeed, Siebenkæs even said (and on one +occasion he did it) that we ought sometimes to put on the beggar’s +scrip in jest, simply to accustom the back to it against more serious +times. And he considered that he justified (as well as complimented) +himself in going on to say, “It is easier to bear poverty like +Epictetus than to choose it like Antoninus; in the same way that it is +easier for a slave to stick out his own leg to be cut off, than for a +man who wields a sceptre a yard long to leave the legs of his slaves +alone.” Wherefore he made shift to live for ten years in foreign parts, +and for half a year in the imperial burgh, without asking his guardian +for a single halfpenny of the interest of his capital. But as it was +his idea to introduce his orphan, moneyless bride as mistress and +overseer into a silver mine all ready opened and timbered for her +reception (for such he considered his 100<i>l</i>. with the accumulated +interest to be), it had pleased him to give her to understand, while he +was in Augspurg, that he had nothing but his bare bread, and that what +little he <i>could</i> scrape together by the sweat of his brow, went from +hand to mouth, though he worked as hard as any man, and cared little +about the Upper House of Parliament or the Lower. “I’ll be handed,” he +had long ago said, “if I ever marry a woman who knows how much I have a +year. As it is, women often look upon a husband as a species of demon, +to whom they sign away their souls—often their child—that the evil +one may give them money and eatables.” +</p> + +<p> +This longest of summer days and Mondays was followed by the longest of +winter nights (which is impossible only in an astronomical sense). +Early next morning, the Schulrath Stiefel drove up, and lifted out of +the carriage (fine manners have twice their charm when they adorn a +scholar) a bonnet-block instead of the bride, and ordered the rest of +her belongings, which consisted of a white tinned box, to be unloaded, +while he, with her head under his arm, ran upstairs to the advocate. +</p> + +<p> +“Your worthy intended,” he said, “is coming directly. She is getting +ready at this moment, in a farm cottage, for the sacred rite, and +begged me to come on before, lest you should be impatient. A true +woman, in Solomon’s sense of the term, and I congratulate you most +heartily.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Heir Advocate Siebenkæs, my pretty lady?—I can conduct you to him +myself. He lodges with me, and I will wait upon you this moment,” said +the wig-maker, down at the door, and offered his hand to lead her up: +but, as she caught sight of her second bonnet-block, still sitting in +the carriage, she took it on her left arm as if it had been a baby (the +hairdresser in vain attempting to get hold of it), and followed him +with a hesitating step into the advocate’s room. She held out her right +hand only, with a deep curtsey and gentle greeting, to her bridegroom, +and on her full round face (everything in it was round, brow, eyes, +mouth, and chin) the roses far out-bloomed the lilies, and were all the +prettier to look upon as seen below the large black silk bonnet; while +the snow-white muslin dress, the many-tinted nosegay of artificial +flowers, and the white points of her shoes, added charm upon charm to +her timid figure. She at once untied her bonnet—there being barely +time to get one’s hair done and be married—and laid her garland, which +she had hidden at the farm that the people might not see it, down upon +the table, that her head might be properly put to rights, and powdered +for the ceremony (as a person’s of quality ought to be) by the +landlord, thus conveniently at hand. +</p> + +<p> +Thou dear Lenette! A bride is, it is true, during many days, for +everyone whom she’s not going to many, a poor meagre piece of +shewbread—and especially is she so to me. But I except one hour, +namely, that on the morning of the wedding-day, when the girl, whose +life has been all freedom hitherto, trembling in her wedding dress, +overgrown (like an ivied tree) with flowers and feathers, which, with +others like them, fate is soon to pluck away—and with anxious pious +eyes overflowing on her mother’s heart for the last and loveliest time; +this hour, I say, moves me, in which, standing all adorned on the +scaffold of joy, she celebrates so many partings, and one single +meeting: when the mother turns away from her and goes back to her other +children, leaving her, all fainthearted, to a stranger. “Thou heart, +beating high with happiness,” I think then, “not always wilt thou throb +thus throughout the sultry years of wedded life; often wilt thou pour +out thine own blood, the better to pass along the path to age, as the +chamois hunter keeps his foot from sliding by the blood from his own +heel.” And then I would fain go out to the gazing, envious virgins by +the wayside leading to the church, and say to them, “Do not so begrudge +the poor girl the happiness of a, perhaps fleeting, illusion. Ah, what +you and she are looking at to-day is the strife- and beauty-apple of +marriage hanging only on the sunny side of love, all red and soft; no +one sees the green sour side of the apple hidden in the shade. And if +ye have ever been grieved to the soul for some luckless wife who has +chanced, ten years after her wedding, to come upon her old bridal +dress, in a drawer, while tears for all the sweet illusions she has +lost in these ten years rise in a moment to her eyes, are you so sure +it will be otherwise with this envied one who passes before you all joy +and brightness now?” +</p> + +<p> +I should not, however, have performed this unexpected modulation into +the “remote key” of tenderheartedness, had it not been that I managed +to form to myself a picture so irresistibly vivid of Lenette’s myrtle +wreath, beneath her hat (I really had not the slightest intention to +touch on the subject of my own personal feelings), and her being all +alone without a mother, and her powdery white-flower face, and (more +vivid still) of the ready willingness with which she put her young +delicate arms (she was scarcely past nineteen) into the polished +handcuffs and chain-rings of matrimony, without so much as looking +round her to see which way she was going to be led by them—— +</p> + +<p> +I could here hold up my hand and take oath that the bridegroom was +quite as much moved as myself, if not more so; at all events, when he +gently wiped the Auricula dust from the blossom-face, so that the +flowers there were seen to bloom unobscured. But he had to be careful +how he carried about that heart of his—so full to the brim of the +potion of love, and tears of gladness—lest it should run over in the +presence of the jovial hairdresser and the serious Schulrath, to his +shame. Effusion was a thing he never permitted himself. All strong +feeling, even of the purest, he hid away, and hardened over: he always +thought of poets and actors, who let on the waterworks of their +emotions to play for show; and there was no one, on the whole, at whom +he bantered so much as at himself. For these reasons, his face to-day +was drawn and crinkled by a queer, laughing, embarrassment, and only +his eyes, where the moisture gleamed, told of the better side of this +condition. As he noticed presently that he wasn’t masking himself +sufficiently by merely playing the part of barber’s mate, and +commissary of provisions (of the breakfast), he adopted stronger +measures, and began to exhibit himself and his movable property in as +favourable a light as possible to Lenette, inquiring of her whether she +didn’t think her room “nicely situated,” and saying, “I can see into +the senate house window, on to the great table, and all the ink +bottles. Several of these chairs I got last spring at a third of their +value, and very handsome they are, don’t you think so? My good old +grandfather’s chair here, though” (he had sat down in it, and laid his +lean arms on the chair’s stuffed ones), “does, I think, take the +precedence in the grandfather dance:<a name="div2Ref_11" href="#div2_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> ‘how they so softly rest,’ arm +upon arm! The flowers upon my table-cloth are rather cleverly done, but +the coffee-tray is considered the better work of the two, I am given to +understand, on account of its flora being japanned; however, they both +do their best in the flower line. My Leyser with his pigskin +‘Meditations’ is a great ornament to the room: the kitchen, though, +is the place—better still than this room; there are pots, all +ranged side by side—and all sorts of things—the hare-skinner and the +hare-spit—my father used to shoot the hares for these.” +</p> + +<p> +The bride smiled on him so contentedly that I must almost believe she +had heard the greater part of the story of the 100<i>l</i>. (with interest) +in her Fuggery through twenty united ear- and speaking-trumpets. I +shall be the more inclined to believe this if the public should happen +to be looking forward eagerly to the hour when he is to hand it over to +her. +</p> + +<p> +It may not be otherwise than agreeable to my fair readers to be +informed that the bridegroom now put on a liver-coloured dress coat, +and that he walked to the church with his dress-maker without any dress +cravat, and with no queue in his hair, picturing as he went, to his own +satirical delight, the slanderous glances with which the fair +Kuhschnappelers were following the good stranger girl across the market +to the sacrificial altar of her maiden name. He had said on a previous +occasion, “We ought rather to facilitate than obstruct backbiting, to a +moderate extent, in a married woman, as some slight compensation for +lost flatteries.” +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath Stiefel remained in the bridal chamber, where he sketched +the outlines of a critique on a school-programme at the writing-table. +</p> + +<p> +I see before me, as I write, the lovers kneeling at the altar steps; +and I should like to cast wishes at them (as flowers are thrown), +especially a wish that they may be like the married in Heaven, who, +according to Swedenborg’s vision, always merge into one angel—although +on earth, too, they are often fused, by warmth, into one angel, and +that a fallen one—the husband (who is the head of the wife) +representing the butting head of this evil one; this wish, I say, I +would fain cast at them; but my attention, in common with that of all +the wedding company is riveted by an extraordinary circumstance and +puzzling apparition behind the music desks of the choir. +</p> + +<p> +For there appears there, looking down at us—and we all looking up at +it—Siebenkæs’s <i>spirit</i>, as the popular expression has it, <i>i.e</i>. his +body, as it <i>ought</i> to be called. If the bridegroom should look up he +might turn pale, and think he saw himself. We are all wrong; he only +turns red. It was his friend Leibgeber who was standing there, having +many years ago vowed to travel any distance to his marriage, solely +that he might laugh at him for twelve hours’ time. +</p> + +<p> +There has seldom been a case of a royal alliance between two peculiar +natures like that between these two. The same contempt for the childish +nonsense held in this life to be noble matter, the same enmity to all +pettiness and perfect indulgence to the little, the same indignation +with dishonourable selfishness, the same delight in laughing in this +lovely madhouse of an earth, the same deafness to the voice of the +multitude, but not to that of honour; these are but some of the first +at hand of the similarities which made of these two but one soul doing +duty in two bodies. And the fact that they were also foster-brothers in +their studies, having for nurses the same branches of knowledge, +including the Law herself, I do not reckon among their chief +resemblances; for it is often the case that the very identity of study +becomes a dissolving decomponent of friendship. Indeed, it was not even +the dissimilarity of their opposite poles which determined their mutual +attraction for each other (Siebenkæs leant towards forgiving, Leibgeber +towards punishing; the former was more a satire of Horace, the latter a +street ballad of Aristophanes with unpoetic as well as poetic +harshnesses). But, as two female friends are fond of being dressed +alike, these two men’s souls had put on just the same frock-coat and +morning costume of life; I mean, two bodies of identical fashion, +colour, button-holes, finishings, and cut. Both had the same flash of +the eyes, the same earthy coloured face, the same tallness, leanness, +and everything. And indeed, the Nature freak of counterpart faces is +commoner than we suppose, because we only notice it when some prince or +great person casts a corporeal reflection. +</p> + +<p> +For which reason I very much wish that Leibgeber had not had a slight +limp, so that he might not have been thereby distinguishable from +Siebenkæs, seeing, at least, that the latter had cleverly etched and +dissolved away his own peculiar mark by causing a live toad to breathe +its last above it. For there had been a pyramidal mole near his left +ear, in the shape of a triangle, or of the zodiacal light, or a +turned-up comet’s tail, of an ass’s ear in short. Partly from +friendship, partly from the enjoyment they had in the scenes of +absurdity which their being confounded with each other gave rise to in +every-day life, they wished to carry the algebraic equation which +existed between them yet a step further, by adopting the same Christian +and surname. But on this point they had a friendly contest, as each +wanted to be the other’s namesake, till at length they settled the +difference by <i>exchanging</i> names, thus following the example of the +natives of Otaheite, among whom the lovers exchange names as well as +hearts. +</p> + +<p> +As it is now several years since my hero was thus lightened of his +worthy name by this friendly name-stealer receiving the other worthy +name in exchange, I can’t do anything to alter this in my chapters. I +must go on calling him Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkæs as I did at the +beginning, and the other Leibgeber; although it is quite unnecessary +for any reviewer to point out to me that the more comic name of +Siebenkæs would have been better suited to this more humoristic +newcomer, with whom, however, the world shall yet be better acquainted +than I am myself. +</p> + +<p> +When these two counterparts caught sight of one another in the church, +their blushing faces crinkled and curled oddly, at which the looker-on +laughed, until he compared the faces with the eyes, which glowed warm +with the deepest affection. While the wedding-rings were being +exchanged, Leibgeber in the choir took from his pocket a pair of +scissors and a quarto sheet of black paper, and cut out a distant view +of the bride’s profile. This cutting out of likenesses he generally +gave out as being his cookshop and bakery upon his perpetual +journeyings; and as it appears that this strange man does not choose to +disclose upon what eminences the waters gather which well up for him +down in the valleys, I am glad to quote (and express my own belief in) +a frequent saying of his regarding his profile cutting—“In the process +of clipping, slices of bread, we know, fall with the cuttings for the +bookbinder, the letter-writer, and the lawyer, when the paper is white; +but in clipping <i>black</i> paper, whether profiles or white mourning +letters with black borders, there fall many more: and if a man is +versed in the liberal art of painting his fellow Christian blacker than +he is—with more members than one—the tongue for instance can do it to +some extent—then Fortune, the Babylonish harlot, will ring that man’s +bells (his dinner bell, and his little altar bell), till her arm is +half crippled.” +</p> + +<p> +While the deacon was laying his hands on the pair, Leibgeber came down +and stood at the red velvet steps of the altar. And when the ceremony +was over he made, on the occasion of a meeting such as this, after a +separation of some half-a-year or so, the following somewhat lengthy +speech:— +</p> + +<p> +“Good morning, Siebenkæs.” +</p> + +<p> +They never said more to each other, though years might have elapsed; +and at the resurrection of the dead, Siebenkæs will answer him, just as +he did to-day,— +</p> + +<p> +“Good morning, Leibgeber.” +</p> + +<p> +The twelve hours of banter, however, which friends often find it an +easy matter to threaten each other with in absence, are an +impossibility to the tender heart, keenly enough alive though it may be +to the humorous sides of matters, when it is moved (as in this case) at +the sight of the friend passing into the vestibule of some new +labyrinth of our subterranean existence. +</p> + +<p> +I have now before my writing-desk the long wedding-table set out; and I +am sorry that no painting of it occurs on any of the vases buried at +Herculaneum, as it would have been dug out with the rest, and an exact +copy of it given in the Herculanean illustrations, so that I could have +inserted the copy in place of anything else. Few have a higher opinion +of the powers of my pen than I have myself; but I see quite well that +it is neither in my power nor in my pen’s to <i>half</i> portray, and that +in a feeble style, how the guests—there were almost as many there as +there were chairs—enjoyed themselves at the dinner; how, moreover, +there was not one single rogue among them (for the bridegroom’s +guardian, Heimlicher von Blaise, had sent an excuse, saying he was very +sick indeed); how the landlord of the house, a jovial, consumptive +Saxon, did something towards expediting his departure from this life by +his powdering and his drinking; how they banged the glasses with the +forks, and the table with the marrowbones, that the former might be +filled and the latter emptied; how in all the house not a soul, not +even the shoemaker or the bookbinder, did a stroke of any other work +but eating, and how even the old woman Sabel (Sabine) who squatted +under the mouse-coloured town gate, shut up her stall on this one day +before the closing of the gate; how not only was there <i>one</i> course +served up, but a second, a “Doppelgänger.” To anyone, indeed, who has +dined at great men’s tables, and there remarked how fine dishes, if +there are two courses, have got to be marshalled according to the laws +of rank, it will not appear unheard of or over splendid that Siebenkæs +(the hairdresser’s wife had done the cooking on this occasion) provided +for the first course. +</p> + +<p> +1. In the centre the soup-tub, or broth fishpond, wherein people could +enjoy the sport of crayfish-catching with their spoons, although the +crayfish, like the beavers, had in this water no more than Robespierre +had in the convent—that is to say, merely the tail. +</p> + +<p> +2. In the first quarter of the globe a beautiful beef torso, or cube of +meat, as pedestal of the entire culinary work of art. +</p> + +<p> +3. In the second, a fricassée, being a complete pattern-card of the +butcher’s shop, <i>sweetly</i> treated. +</p> + +<p> +4. In the third, a Behemoth of pond-carps, which might have swallowed +the prophet Jonah, but which underwent his fate itself. +</p> + +<p> +5. In the fourth, a baked hen-house of a pie, to which the birds had +sent their best members, as a community does to parliament. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot deny myself and my fair readers the pleasure of just slightly +sketching for them a little “cookery-piece” of the second course. +</p> + +<p> +1. In the middle stood, as a basket of garden-flowers might, a pile of +cress-salad. 2. Then the four corners were occupied by the four +syllogistic figures, or the four faculties. In the first corner of the +table was, as first syllogistic figure and faculty, a hare, who, as +antipode of a barefooted friar, had kept on his natural fur boots in +the pan, and who, as Leibgeber justly remarked, had come from the field +with his legs safe and sound in spite of the enemy’s fire, more +fortunate, in this respect, than many a soldier. The second syllogistic +figure consisted of a calf’s tongue, which was black, not from arguing, +but from being smoked. The third, crisped colewort, but without the +stalks: this, ordinarily the food of the two preceding faculties, was +on this occasion eaten along with them; thus is it that in this world +one goes up and another down. The concluding figure was made up of the +three figures of the bridal pair and an eventual baby baked in butter; +these three glorified bodies, which, like “the three children,” had +come forth unscathed from the fiery furnace, and had raisins for souls, +were eaten up bodily, skin and bones, by those cannibals the guests, +with the exception of an arm or so of the infant, which, like the bird +Phœnix, was personified ere it existed. +</p> + +<p> +This picture draws me on. But it ought to be coloured, and as regards +the luxury of the feast, it would not be passing it over too lightly +were I to compare it to a Saxon electoral banquet, by reference to +which I might illustrate it. It is true, the electors of that country +require a good deal (and on that account they used to be weighed every +year); and I am quite aware that at the beginning of the 16th century, +a Saxon treasurer made the following entry in his accounts:—“This day +was our gracious sovereign at the wine, with his court, for which I +have had to disburse the sum of fifteen gulden (25<i>s</i>.). That’s what I +<i>call</i> banquetting!” But what would the Saxon treasurer have written? +how he would have lifted his hands up with amazement if he had read in +my very first chapter that a poor’s advocate had gone and spent three +gulden and seven groschen more than his royal master! +</p> + +<p> +As is the case with many natural springs, the fountains of mirth, which +welled but slowly in the daytime, jetted up higher in the hearts of the +guests as the evening came on. The two advocates indeed told the +company that, as they remembered from their college days, though the +privilege formerly possessed by every German of drinking his fill had +been but too much curtailed by emperors and parliaments, and the +imperial decrees of 1512, 1531, 1548, and 1577 permitted no +drunkenness, yet they did not prohibit Kuhschnappel from exercising the +right common to all imperial states, of abrogating imperial statutes in +cases where local laws exist within their own boundaries. The Schulrath +alone could not quite see (and he shook his head about it internally to +himself twenty times) how two scholars, two lawyers at all events, +could go on gravely joking with a set of such unlearned plebeians and +empty heads as were here supported upon elbows;—joking with them, and +actually conversing about the utter rubbish which they talked. More +than once he spliced on threads of scholarly speech, concerning the +newest, most highly elaborated school addresses, as well as sundry +critiques on the same, but the advocates would have nothing to do with +his threads, but made the bookbinder speak the apprentice speech he +made at his admission to the rank of master, to which the shoemaker, of +his own motion, stitched and cobbled on one which <i>he</i> had made on a +similar occasion. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs remarked to the company in general that in the upper circles +of society people are much graver, and more tedious, and empty than in +the lower; that in the former, if any party happens to come to an end +without accursed tedium, people talk of it for a whole week, whereas in +the latter everyone contributes so much to the merry picnic of +conversation that the only thing there generally is not enough of, is +beer. “Oh!” he went on, “if everyone of our condition would but think +of it, he would but envy those of a lower; how accurately, in a +figurative sense too, does that old truth hold good, that coarse linen +keeps one much warmer than fine linen, or even silk, just as a wooden +house is easier warmed than a stone one—and the stone one again +doesn’t get cool so soon as the wooden in summer—or as coarse brown +flour is much more nourishing than the fine white, as all the doctors +tell us. And I cannot bring myself to believe that ladies in Paris who +wear diamond hairpins, lead half such happy lives as the women there +who get their living by picking up old hairpins out of the street +sweepings; and many a one whose fuel is nothing but dry fir-cones, +gathered by himself as a substitute for fir-fuel” (here the fuel +economising company thought vividly of their own case), “is often quite +as well off on the whole as people who can preserve green cones in +sugar and eat them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Friend Parish Advocate,” said Leibgeber, “there you hit it! In the +tap-room and the bar-parlour the worst is at the beginning, the blow, +the kick, the angry word come first of all; the pleasure swells with +the reckoning. The reverse is the case in the palace; in a ‘palais’ for +the ‘palais’ everybody’s enjoyment goes into his mouth at the same +instant; just as the little Aphides on the leaves all lift up their +tail-ends, and squirt out the honey at the same moment,<a name="div2Ref_12" href="#div2_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> in the +palace it is absorbed with like simultaneousness and sociability. +Tediousness, again, annoyance and satiety, are only mixed up +ingeniously among the various pleasures which are served up and +administered in the course of a great entertainment, just as we give a +dog an emetic by rubbing him all over with it, so that he may bring it +to operate by licking it slowly off.” +</p> + +<p> +And other similar sayings were spoken. When once any pleasure has +reached a considerable height, its natural tendency is to become +greater. Many of the lower class members of the sitting exercised the +privilege of drink, and of the special inquisition, to say “Thou” to +one another. Even the gentleman in the red plush coat (the Schulrath +was given to wear one in the dog-day holidays) screwed up his lips, and +smiled in a seductive manner, as elderly maiden ladies do in the +presence of elderly single gentlemen, and gave hints that he had got at +home a couple of real Horatian bottles of champagne. “Not sparkling +then, I’m sure?” Leibgeber answered inquiringly. The Schulrath, who +thought the best kind of champagne exactly the worst, replied with some +self-consciousness, “If it isn’t sparkling, well and good, I swear I’ll +drink every drop of it myself.” The bottles appeared. Leibgeber, taking +the first one, carefully filed through its barrier chain, removed the +cork and opened it as if it had been a last will and testament. +</p> + +<p> +What I maintain is, that, even should the two balsam-trees of life, +namely wit and the love of our fellow men, be withered away up to the +very topmost twig, they can still be brought to life by a proper shower +out of the watering pot of these said bottles—in three minutes they +will begin to sprout. As the glad, wild essence, the wine of the silver +foam, touched the heads of the guests, every brain began to seethe and +glow while fair air-castles rose in each amain. Brilliant and many +tinted were the floating bubbles blown and set free by the Schulrath +Stiefel’s ideas of all categories, his simple as well as his compound +ideas, his innate ideas, and also his fixed. And can it ever be +forgotten that he ceased to make learned statements, except on the +subject of Lenette’s perfections, and that he told Leibgeber in +confidence, that he should really like to marry, not indeed, “the tenth +Muse, or the fourth Grace, or the second Venus—for it was clear who +had got <i>her</i> already but some step-sister goddess, a distant relation +or other of hers.” During the whole journey, he said, he had preached +from the coachbox, as from a pulpit, enlarging to the bride on the +subject of the blessedness of the married state, painting it to her in +the brightest colours, and drawing such a lively picture of it, that he +quite longed to enter into it himself: and the bridegroom would have +thanked him if he had seen how gratefully she had looked at him in +return. And, indeed, the bride was a great success, and happy in all +she did that day, and particularly that evening; and what became her +best of all was that on such a high day as this, she waited upon others +more than she let herself be waited upon—that she put on a light +every-day dress—that even at this advanced stage of her own education +she took private lessons in cookery and household matters from her +female guests, who aired their own theories on these subjects—and that +she already began to think about to-morrow. Stiefel, in his inspired +state, ventured upon exploits which were all but impossible. He placed +his left arm under his right, and thus supporting its weight and that +of its plush sleeve, in a horizontal position, snuffed the candle +before the whole company, and did it rather skilfully on the whole; +somewhat like a gardener on a ladder holding out his pruning shears at +arm’s length to a high branch and snipping off the whole concern by a +slight movement of his hand at the bottom. He asked Leibgeber plump out +to give him a profile of Lenette, and later on, when he was going away, +he even made an attempt (but this was the only one of his ventures +which failed) to get hold of her hand and kiss it. +</p> + +<p> +At length all the joy-fires of this happy little company burnt down +like their candles, and one by one the rivers of Eden fell away into +the night. The guests and the candles got fewer and fewer; at last +there was only one guest there, Stiefel (for Leibgeber is not a guest), +and one long candle. It is a lovely and touching time when the loud +clamour of a merry company has finally buzzed itself away into silence, +and just one or two, left alone, sit quietly, often sadly, listening to +the faint echoes, as it were, of all the joy. Finally, the Schulrath +struck the last remaining tent of this camp of enjoyment, and departed; +but he would not for a moment suffer that those fingers, which, in +spite of all their efforts, his lips could not touch, should be clasped +about a cold brass candlestick, for the purpose of lighting him +downstairs. So Leibgeber had to do this lighting. The husband and wife, +for the first time, were alone in the darkness, hand in hand. +</p> + +<p> +Oh, hour of beauty! when in every cloud there stood a smiling angel, +dropping flowers instead of rain, may some faint reflection from thee +reach even to this page of mine, and shine on there for ever. +</p> + +<p> +The bridegroom had never yet kissed his bride. He knew, or fancied, +that his face was a clever one, with sharp lines and angles, expressing +energetic, active effort; not a smooth, regular, “handsome” one: and +as, moreover, he always laughed at himself and his own appearance, he +supposed it would strike other persons in the same light. Hence it was +that, although as an every-day matter he rose superior to the eyes and +tongues of a whole street (not even taking the pains mentally to snap +his fingers at them), he never, except in extraordinary moments of +dithyrambics of friendship, had mustered up the courage to kiss his +Leibgeber—let alone Lenette. And now he pressed her hand more closely, +and in a dauntless manner turned his face to hers (for, you see, they +were in the dark, and he couldn’t see her); and he wished the staircase +had as many steps as the cathedral tower, so that Leibgeber might be a +long time coming back with the candle. Of a sudden there <i>danced</i> (so +to speak) over his lips a gliding, tremulous kiss, and—then all the +flames of his affection blazed on high, the ashes blown clean away. For +Lenette, innocent as a child, believed it to be the bride’s duty to +give this kiss. He put his arms about the frightened giver with the +courage of bashfulness, and glowed upon her lips with his with all the +fire wherewith love, wine and joy had endowed him; but—so strange is +her sex—she turned away her mouth, and let the burning lips touch her +cheek. And there the modest bridegroom contented himself with one long +kiss, giving expression to his rapture only in tears of unutterable +sweetness which fell like glowing naphtha-drops upon Lenette’s cheeks, +and thence into her trembling heart. She leant her face further away; +but in her beautiful wonder at his love, she drew him closer to her. +</p> + +<p> +He left her before his darling friend came back. The tell-tale +powder-snow which had fallen on the bridegroom—that butterfly-dust +which the very slightest touch of these white butterflies leaves upon +our fingers (and hence it was a good idea of Pitt’s to put a tax on +powder in 1795)—told some of the story, but the eyes of the friend and +the bride, gleaming in happy tears, told him it all. The two friends +looked for some time at each other with embarrassed smiles, and Lenette +looked at the ground. Leibgeber said, “Hem! Hem!” twice over, and at +length, in his perplexity, remarked, “We’ve had a delightful evening!” +He took up a position behind the bridegroom’s chair, to be out of +sight, and laid his hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it right +heartily; but the happy Siebenkæs could restrain himself no longer; he +stood up, resigned the bride’s hand, and the two friends, at last, +after the long yearning of the long day, as if celebrating the moment +of their meeting, stood silently embracing, united by angels, with +Heaven all around them. His heart beating higher, the bridegroom would +fain have widened and completed this circle of union, by joining his +bride and his friend in one embrace; but the bride and the friend took +each one side of him, each embracing only him. Then three pure heavens +opened in glory in three pure hearts; and nothing was there but God, +love, and happiness, and the little earthly tear which hangs on all our +joy-flowers, here below. +</p> + +<p> +In this their great joy and bliss, overborne by unwonted emotion, and +feeling almost strange to each other, they had scarce the courage to +look into each other’s tearful eyes; and Leibgeber went away in +silence, without a word of parting or good night. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch02"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">HOME FUN—SUNDRY FORMAL CALLS—THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE—A LOVE +QUARREL, AND A FEW HARD WORDS—ANTIPATHETIC INK ON THE WALL—FRIENDSHIP +OF THE SATIRISTS—GOVERNMENT OF KUHSCHNAPPEL. +</p> + +<p> +There is many a life which is as pleasant to live as to write, and the +material of this one, in particular, which I am engaged in writing, is +as yet always giving out, like rosewood on the turning lathe, a truly +delicious perfume, all over my workshop. Siebenkæs duly arose on the +Wednesday, but not till the Sunday was it his intention to deposit in +the hands of his diligent house goddess—who put a cap on to her +cap-block in the morning before she put one on to herself—the silver +ingots from his guardian’s coffer (wrapped in blotting paper), her +palisades of refuge in the siege of this life; for in fact he couldn’t +do so any sooner, because his guardian had gone into the country, that +is to say, out of town, till the Saturday night. “I can give you no +notion, old Leibgeber,” said Siebenkæs, “what a joy I feel in looking +forward to how this will delight my wife. I’m sure, to give her +pleasure, I could wish it were three thousand dollars. The dear child +has always hitherto had to live from bonnet to bonnet, but how she +<i>will</i> consider herself a woman set up on a sudden for life, when she +finds she can carry out a hundred housekeeping projects, which, I see +as well as possible, she has got in her head already. And then, old +boy, with the money in our hands, we shall begin the keeping of my +silver wedding directly, the moment the evening service is over—there +shall be a good half-florin’s worth of beer in every room in the house. +Look here! why shouldn’t the dove, or call him the sparrow, of <i>my</i> +hymen play out beer on the people as the two-headed eagle in Frankfort +does wine at a coronation?” Leibgeber answered, “The reason he can’t +is, that the prey he catches is of quite another brand. The sour wine +(of the Frankfort eagle) is but the grapeskins—the feathers, the wool, +and the hair which eagles always eject.” +</p> + +<p> +It would be of no use whatever—because hundreds of Kuhschnappelers +would correct my statement in their local paper, the ‘Imperial +News’—if I were to tell a falsehood here (which I should like very +much to do), and assert that the two advocates spent the short week of +their being together with that gravity and propriety which, becoming as +they are to mankind in general, do yet more particularly secure to +scholars and to the learned the respect and consideration of commoner +minds, to say nothing of the Kuhschnappelian intelligences. +</p> + +<p> +Unfortunately I have got to sing to another tune. In the town of +Kuhschnappel, as in all other towns, provincial, or metropolitan, what +Leibgeber was least of all conspicuous for was a proper gravity of +deportment and behaviour. Here, as elsewhere, his first proceeding was +to get an introduction to the club, as a stranger artist, in order that +he might ensconce himself on a sofa, and, without uttering a word or a +syllable to a human being, go to sleep under the noses of the company +of the “Relaxation” as the club was called. “This,” he said, “was what +he liked to have the opportunity of doing in all towns where there were +clubs, casinos, museums, musical societies, &c.; because to sleep in +any rational manner at night in one’s ordinary quiet bed was a thing +which <i>he</i>, at least, found he was seldom able to manage, on account of +the loud battle of ideas which went on in his head, and the firework +trains of processions of pictures all interweaving and whirling in +and out with such a crash and a din that one could hardly see or hear +one’s self. Whereas when one lies down upon a club sofa, everything of +this sort quiets itself down, and a universal truce of ideas +establishes itself; the delicious effect of the company all talking at +once—the happily chosen and appropriate words contributed to the +political-and-other-conversation-picnic, of which one distinguishes +nothing but an <i>ultima</i>, perhaps, or sometimes only an <i>antepenultima</i>; +this alone sings you into a light slumber. But when a more serious +discussion arises, and some point is argued, disputed and discussed in +all its bearings in a universal clamorous shout—your barometer becomes +completely stationary, and you sleep the deep sleep of a flower which +is rocked, but not awakened, by the storm.” +</p> + +<p> +One or two towns with which I am acquainted must, I am sure, remember a +stranger who always used to go to sleep in their clubs, and must also +recollect the beaming expression of countenance with which he would +look about him when he got up and took his hat, as much as to say, +“Many thanks for this refreshing rest.” +</p> + +<p> +However, I have little to do with Leibgeber’s waking or with his +sleeping here in Kuhschnappel; him I may treat with some indulgence, +seeing that he is soon to be off again into the wide world. But it is +anything but a matter of indifference that my young hero, just +established here with his wife, and whose pranks I have undertaken to +give some account of, as well as of the hits he gets in return, should +go and conduct himself just as if his name was Leibgeber; which had +long ceased to be the case, seeing that he had given formal notice to +his guardian that he had changed it to Siebenkæs. +</p> + +<p> +To mention but one prank—was it not a piece of true tomfoolery that, +when the procession of poor scholars, singing for alms about the +streets, were just beginning their usual begging hymn under the windows +of the best religious families on the opposite side of the street, and +just as they had struck their key-note and were going to start off with +their chorus, Leibgeber, to begin with, made his boar-hound “Saufinder” +(he couldn’t live without a big dog) look out of window with a +fashionable lady’s night-cap on his head? And was it by any means a +soberer proceeding on Siebenkæs’s part, that he took lemons and bit +into them before the eyes of the whole singing class, so that all their +teeth begun to water in an instant? The result will answer these +questions for itself. The singers, having Saufinder in his night-cap in +full view, could no more bring their lips together into a singing +position than a man can whistle and laugh at the same instant. At the +same time all their vocal apparatus being completely submerged by the +opening of their glands, every note they attempted to give out had to +wade painfully through water. In short, was this entire ludicrous +interruption of the whole company of street singers not the precise end +aimed at by both the advocates? +</p> + +<p> +But Siebenkæs has only recently come back from college, and being still +half-full of the freedom of university life, may be excused a liberty +or two. And indeed I consider the little exuberances of university +youth to be like the adipose matter, which, according to Reaumur, +Bonnet, and Cuvier, is stored up by the caterpillar for the nourishment +of the future butterfly during its chrysalis state; the liberty of +manhood has to be alimented by that of youth, and if a son of the muse +has not room given him to develop in full freedom, he will never +develop into anything but some office-holder creeping along on all +fours. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile the two friends spent the following days—not wholly in a +disorderly manner—in the writing of marriage cards. With these, on +which of course there was nothing but the words, “Mr. Firmian +Stanislaus Siebenkæs, Poor’s Advocate, and his wife, <i>née</i> Engelkraut; +with compliments.”—with these papers, and with the lady, they were +both to drive about the town on the Saturday, and Leibgeber had to get +down at all the respectable houses and hand in a card, which is by no +means otherwise than a laudable and befitting custom in towns where +people observe the usages of good society. But the two brethren, +Siebenkæs and Leibgeber, appeared to follow these usages of imperial +and rural towns more from satirical motives than anything else, +conforming to them pretty minutely, it is true, but clearly chiefly for +the fun of the thing, each of them playing the part of first low +comedian and of audience at the same time. It would be an insult to the +borough of Kuhschnappel to suppose that, notwithstanding Siebenkæs’s +zealous readiness to join in all the processions of the little place, +in and out of churches, to the town hall and the shooting-ground, it +was wholly unobservant of the satisfaction which it afforded him rather +to make fun of some properly ordered cortége, and mar the effect of it +by his unsuitable dress and absurd behaviour, than to be an ornament to +it. And the genuine eagerness with which he tried to get admitted as a +member of the Kuhschnappel shooting-club was ascribed rather to his +love of a joke than to his being the son of a keen sportsman. As for +Leibgeber, he of course has the very devil in him as regards all such +matters; but he is younger than Siebenkæs, and about to set out on his +travels. +</p> + +<p> +So they drove about the town on the Saturday—and where anybody in the +shape of a grandee lived they stopped, left their passengers’ tickets +and drove on, without any misbehaviour. Many ladies and gentlemen, it +is true, got the wrong sow by the ear, and confounded the card carrier +with the young husband sitting in the carriage; but the card carrier +maintained his gravity, knowing that fun has its own proper time. The +cards (some of which were glazed) were delivered according to the +directory, firstly to the members of the government, both of the +greater and lesser council—to the seventy members of the greater, and +the thirteen of the lesser council; consequently the judge, the +treasurer, the two finance councillors, the Heimlicher (so to say, +tribune of the people) and the remaining eight ordinary members—these +constituting the said lesser council—each received his card. After +which the carriage drove down lower, and provided the minor government +officials in the various chambers and offices with <i>their</i> cards, such +as the Offices of Woods, of the Game Commissioners, the Office of +Reform (which latter was for the repression of luxury), and the Meat +Tax Commission, which was presided over by a single master butcher, a +very nice old man. +</p> + +<p> +I am much afraid I have made a considerable slip, inasmuch as I have +drawn up no tables relative to the constitution, &c., of this imperial +borough of Kuhschnappel (which is properly a small imperial town, +though it was once a large one) to lay before the learned and +statistical world. However, I can’t possibly pull up here in the full +gallop of my chapter, but must wait till we all get to the end of it, +when I can more conveniently open my statistical warehouse. +</p> + +<p> +The wheel of fortune soon began to rattle, and throw up mud; for when +Leibgeber took his eighth part of a placard of Siebenkæs’s marriage to +the house of his guardian, the Heimlicher von Blaise, a tall, meagre, +barge-pole of a woman, wrapped up in wimples of calico, the +Heimlicher’s wife, received it indeed, and with warmth, but warmth of +the sort with which we generally administer a cudgelling; moreover, she +uttered the following words (calculated to give rise to reflection)— +</p> + +<p> +“My husband is the Heimlicher of this town, and what is more, he’s away +from home. He has nothing to do with seven cheeses;<a name="div2Ref_13" href="#div2_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> he is tutor and +guardian to persons belonging to the highest and noblest families. You +had better be off as fast as you like; you’ve got hold of the wrong man +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I quite think we have, myself,” said Leibgeber. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs, the ward, here tried to pacify his letter or paper carrier +with the woman a little, by suggesting that, like every good dog, she +was but barking at the strangers before fetching and carrying for them: +and when his friend, more anxious than himself, said, “You’re quite +sure, are you not, that you took proper legal precautions against any +venomous ‘objections’ which the guardian might make to paying up your +money, on account of your changing your name?” he assured him, that +before he had established himself as Siebenkæs, he had procured his +guardian’s opinion and approval in writing, which he would show him +when they got home. +</p> + +<p> +But when they did get home, Von Blaise’s letter was nowhere to be +found—it wasn’t in any of the boxes, nor in any of the college +note-books, nor even among the wastepaper—in fact, there was nothing +of the kind. +</p> + +<p> +“But what a donkey I am to bother about it!” cried Siebenkæs, “what do +I require it for, at all?” +</p> + +<p> +Here Leibgeber, who had been glancing at the Saturday newspapers, +suddenly shoved them into his pocket, and said in a somewhat unwonted +tone of voice, “Come out, old boy, and let’s have a run in the fields.” +When they got there, he put into his hands the ‘Schaffhausen News,’ the +‘Swabian Mercury,’ the ‘Stuttgart Times,’ and the ‘Erlangen Gazette,’ +and said, “These will enable you to form some idea of the sort of +scoundrel you have for a guardian.” +</p> + +<p> +In each of these newspapers, the following notification appeared:— +</p> + +<p> +“Whereas, Hoseas Heinrich Leibgeber, now in his 29th year, proceeded to +the University of Leipzig in 1774, but since that date has not been +heard of: now the said Hoseas Heinrich Leibgeber, is hereby, at the +instance of his cousin, Herr Heimlicher von Blaise, edictally cited and +summoned by himself or the lawful heirs of his body, within six months +from the date of these presents (whereof two months are hereby +constituted the first term, two months the second, and two months the +third and peremptory term), to appear within the Inheritance Office of +this borough, and, on satisfactory proof of identity, to receive over +the sum of 1200 Rhenish gulden deposited in the hands of the said +Heimlicher von Blaise as trustee and guardian; <i>which failing</i>, that, +as directed by the decree of council of 24th July 1655 (which enacts, +that any person who shall be for ten years absent from the realm, shall +be taken <i>pro mortuo</i>), the above-named sum of 1200 Rhenish florins may +be made over and paid to his said guardian and trustee, the aforesaid +Heimlicher von Blaise. Dated at Kuhschnappel in Swabia, the 20th +August, 1785. +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:5%; text-indent:-3%">“Inheritance Office of the free Imperial +Borough of Kuhschnappel.” +</p> + +<p> +It is unnecessary to remind the legal reader that the decree of council +referred to is not in accordance with the legal usage of Bohemia, where +thirty-one years is the stipulated period, but with that which formerly +prevailed in France, when ten years were sufficient. And when the +advocate came to the end of the notice, and stared, motionless, at its +concluding lines, his soul’s brother took hold of his hand, and cried, +“Alas! alas! it is I who am to blame for all this, for changing names +with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You?—oh, you? The devil alone, and nobody else. But I must find that +letter,” he said, and they made another search all over the house, in +every corner where a letter could be. After an hour of this Leibgeber +hunted out one with a broken seal of the guardian, of which the thick +paper, and the broad legal fold, without an envelope, told +unmistakeably that it had been addressed neither by a lady, a merchant, +nor courtier, but by the quill of a bird of quite a different tribe. +However, there was nothing <i>in</i> this letter, except Siebenkæs’s name in +Siebenkæs’s own writing—not another word, outside or inside. Quite +natural; for the advocate had a bad habit of trying his hand and his +pen on the backs of letters, and writing his own name and other +people’s as well, with flourishes about them. +</p> + +<p> +The letter <i>had</i> once been written in the inside, but, to save an +incredible waste of good paper, the Heimlicher von Blaise had written +his concurrence in the exchange of the names with an ink which vanishes +from the paper of itself, and leaves it, <i>in integrum</i>, white as it was +before it was written on. +</p> + +<p> +I may, perhaps, be doing a chance service to many persons of the better +classes, who nowadays more than ever have occasion to write promissory +notes and other business documents, if I here copy out for them the +receipt for this ink which vanishes after it is dry; I take it from a +reliable source. Let the man of rank scrape off the surface from a +piece of fine black cloth, such as he wears at court—grind the +scrapings finer still on a piece of marble—moisten this fine cloth +dust repeatedly with water, then make his ink with this, and write his +promissory note with it; he will find that, as soon as the moisture has +evaporated, every letter of the promissory note has flown away with it +in the form of dust; the white star will have shone out, as it were, +through the blackness of the ink. +</p> + +<p> +But I consider that I am doing an equal service to the holders and +presenters of such promissory notes as to the drawers of them, inasmuch +as, for the future, they will be careful not to be satisfied with a +security of this description, till they have exposed it for some time +to the sun. +</p> + +<p> +Some time ago, I should have here been apt to confound this cloth ink +with the <i>sympathetic</i> ink (likewise possessing the property of turning +pale and disappearing after a time), which is commonly made use of in +both the preliminary and final treaties entered into between royal +persons; the latter however, has a <i>red</i> tint. A treaty of peace of +three years’ standing is no longer legible to a man in the prime of +life, because the <i>red</i> ink—the <i>encaustum</i>, with which formerly no +one but the Roman emperors might write—is too apt to turn <i>pale</i>, +unless a sufficient number of human beings (from whom, as from the +cochineal insect, this dye stuff is prepared) have been made use of in +its manufacture; and this (from motives of sordid parsimony) is not +always the case. So that the treaty has frequently to be engraved and +etched into the territory afresh with good instruments—the so-called +“instruments of peace”—at the point of the bayonet. +</p> + +<p> +The two friends kept the happy young wife in ignorance of this first +thunderclap of the storm which was threatening her married life. On the +Sunday morning they went to make a friendly call on the Heimlicher +during the church service; unfortunately he was at church, however. +They postponed their entertaining visit till the afternoon; but then he +himself was paying one to the chapel of the orphan asylum, the whole +blooming body of the orphans, boys and girls, having previously made +one to him, to enjoy the privilege of kissing his hand in his capacity +of superintendent of the orphan asylum; for the inspectorship of that +institution was, as he modestly but truly observed, entrusted to his +unworthy hands. After the evening sermon, he had to perform a service +of his own in his own house, in short, he was fenced off from the two +advocates by a triple row of spiritual altar rails. It was his +admirable custom to permit the members of his household, not indeed to +eat, but to pray at the same table with him. He thought it well to +spend the Sunday as a day of labour in psalm-singing with them, +because, by such devotional exercises, he best preserved them from sins +of Sabbath breaking, such as working on <i>their own</i> account, at sewing, +mending, &c. And, on the whole, he thought it well to make of the +Sunday in this manner a day of preparation for the coming week, just as +actors in places where Sunday representations are not allowed, have +their rehearsals on that day. +</p> + +<p> +However, I recommend people in delicate health not to go near or smell +at this sort of beautiful sky-blue plants which grow in the Church’s +vineyard only to be looked at, as an English garden is adorned with the +pretty aconite and its sky- or Jesuit’s-blue <i>poisonous</i> flowers, which +grow pyramidally to man’s height.<a name="div2Ref_14" href="#div2_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> People like Von Blaise, not only +ascend Mount Sinai and the Golgotha, that, like goats, they may feed as +they climb; but they occupy these sacred heights for the purpose of +making attacks and incursions from them, just as good generals take +possession of the hills, and particularly the <i>gallows-hills</i>. The +Heimlicher mounts from earth to the heavens oftener than Blanchard +does, and with similar motives, indeed, he can keep his soul on the +wing in these elevated regions for half a day at a time, in which +respect, however, he does not quite equal the King of Siam’s dragon +kites which the mandarins, by relieving each other at the task, manage +to keep up in the sky for a couple of months at a time. He soars, not +as the lark does, to make music, but as the noble falcon does, to swoop +down upon something or other. If you see him praying on a Mount of +Olives, be sure that he’s going to build an oil mill on it; and if he +weeps by a brook Kedron, depend upon it he’s either going a-fishing in +it, or else thinking of pitching somebody into it. He prays with the +object of luring to him the <i>ignes-fatui</i> of sins; he kneels, but only +as a front rank does, to deliver its fire at the foe before it; he +opens his arms as with warm benevolent affection, to fold home one, a +ward say, in their embrace, but only in the manner of the red-hot +Moloch, that he may burn him to cinders; or he folds his arms piously +together, but does it as the machines called “maidens” did, only to cut +people to pieces. +</p> + +<p> +At last the friends, in their anxiety, came to see that there are some +people whom one can only manage to get access to when one comes as +thieves do, unannounced so at 8 o’clock on the Sunday evening they +walked, <i>sans façon</i>, into Von Blaise’s house. Everything was still and +empty; they went through an empty hall into an empty drawing-room, the +half-open folding doors of which led into the household chapel. All +they could see through the crevice was six chairs, an open hymn-book +lying on its face on each of them, and a table with wax-cloth cover, on +which were Miller’s ‘Heavenly Kiss of the Soul,’ and Schlichthoher’s +‘Five-fold Dispositions for all Sundays and Feasts of the Church.’ They +pressed through the gap, and lo and behold! there was the Heimlicher +all alone, continuing his devotions in his sleep, with his cap under +his arm. His house- and church-servants had read to him till sleep had +stiffened him to a petrifaction, or pillar of salt (an event which +occurred every Sunday), for his eyes and his head were alike heavy with +the edible, the potable, and the spiritual, refreshment of which he had +partaken; or because he was like many who think it well to close their +eyes during the sowing of the heavenly seed, just as people do when +their heads are being powdered, or because churches and private chapels +are still like those ancient temples in which the communications of the +oracles were received during sleep. And as soon as they saw his eyes +closed, the servants would read more and more softly, to accustom him +gradually to the complete cessation of the sound; and, by and by, the +devout domestics would steal gently away, leaving him in his attitude +of prayer till 10 o’clock; at that hour (when, moreover, Madame von +Blaise generally came home from paying visits) the domestic sacristan +and night watchman would rouse him from his sleep with a shrill “Amen,” +and he would put something on to his bald head again. +</p> + +<p> +This evening matters fell out differently. Leibgeber rapped loudly on +the table two or three times with the knuckle of his forefinger to wake +the city’s father out of his first sleep. When he opened his eyes and +saw before him the two lean parodies and copies of one another, he +took, in his beer- and sleep-heaviness of idea, a glass periwig from +off a block, and put that on his head instead of his cap, which had +fallen down. His ward addressed him politely, saying he wished to +present to him his friend with whom he had made the exchange of names. +He likewise called him his “kind cousin and guardian.” Leibgeber, more +angry and less self-contained, because he was younger, and because the +wrong had not been done to <i>him</i>, fired into the Heimlicher’s ears, +from a position closer to him by three discourteous paces, the +inquiries, “Which of us two is it that your worship has given out <i>pro +mortuo</i>, that you may be able to cite him as a dead man? There are the +ghosts of <i>two</i> of us here both together.” Blaise turned with a lofty +air from Leibgeber to Siebenkæs, and said, “If you have not changed +your dress, sir, as well as your name, I believe <i>you</i> are the +gentleman whom I have had the honour of talking with on several +previous occasions. Or was it <i>you</i>, sir?” he said to Leibgeber, who +shook like one possessed. “Well,” he continued in a more pleasant tone, +“I must confess to you, Mr. Siebenkæs, that I had always supposed, +until now, that you were the person who left this for the university +ten years ago, and whose little inheritance I then assumed the +guardianship or curatorship of. What probably chiefly contributed to my +mistake, if it be a mistake, was, I presume, the likeness which, +<i>præter propter</i>, you certainly seem to bear to my missing ward; for in +many details you undoubtedly differ from him; for instance, he had a +mole beside his ear.” +</p> + +<p> +“The infernal mole,” interrupted Leibgeber, “was obliterated by means +of a toad, on my account entirely, because it was like an ass’s ear, +and he never thought that, when he lost his ear, he should lose a +relative along with it.” +</p> + +<p> +“That may be,” said the guardian coldly, “You must prove to me, Herr +Advocate, that it was to YOU I had been thinking of paying over the +inheritance to-day; for your announcement that you had exchanged your +family name for that of an utter stranger I considered to be probably +one of the jokes for which you are so celebrated. But I learned last +week that you had been proclaimed in church and married in the name of +Siebenkæs, and more to the same effect. I then discussed the question +with Herr Grossweibel (the President of the Chamber of Inheritance), +and with my son-in-law, Herr von Knärnschilder, and they assured me I +should be acting contrary to my duty and safety if I let this property +out of my hands. What would you do—they very properly said—what +answer would you have to make if the real owner of the name were to +appear and demand another settlement of the guardianship accounts? It +would be too bad, truly, for a man, who, besides his manifold business +of other kinds, undertook this troublesome guardian work, which the law +does not require him to do, purely from affection for his relative, and +from the love which he bears to all his brethren of mankind<a name="div2Ref_15" href="#div2_15"><sup>[15]</sup></a>—it +would be too bad, I say, for him to have to pay up this money a second +time out of his own pocket. At the same time, Mr. Siebenkæs, as, in my +capacity of a private individual, I am more disposed to admit the +validity of your claim than you perhaps suppose, you being a lawyer, +know quite as well as I that my individual conviction carries with it +no legal weight whatever, and that I have to deal with this matter not +as a man, but as a guardian—it would probably be the best course to +let some third party less biassed in my favour, such as the Inheritance +Office, decide the question. Let me have the satisfaction, Mr. +Siebenkæs, as soon as it may be possible” (he ended more smilingly, and +laying his hand on the other’s shoulder) “to see that which I hope may +prove the case, namely, that you are my long-missing cousin, Leibgeber, +properly established by legal proof.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said Leibgeber, grimly calm, and with all kinds of +scale-passages and fugatos coursing over the colour-piano of his face, +“is the little bit of resemblance which Mr. Siebenkæs there has to—to +<i>himself</i>, that is to say, to your worship’s ward, to be taken as +proving nothing; not even as much as an equal similarity in a case of +<i>comparatio literarum</i> would prove?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course,” said Blasius, “something, certainly, but not +everything; for there were several false Neros, and three or four sham +Sebastians in Portugal; suppose, now, <i>you</i> should be my cousin +yourself, Mr. Leibgeber!” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber jumped up at once, and said in an altered and joyful voice, +“So I am, my dearest guardian—it was all done to try you—I hope you +will pardon my friend his share in the little mystification.” +</p> + +<p> +“All very well,” answered Blasius, more inflatedly, “but your own +changes of ground must show you the necessity for a proper legal +investigation.” +</p> + +<p> +This was more than Siebenkæs could endure, he squeezed his friend by +the hand, as much as to say, “Pray be patient,” and inquired in a voice +which an unwonted feeling of hatred rendered faint, “Did you never +write to me when I was in Leipzig?”—“If you are my ward, I certainly +did, many times; if you are not, you have got hold of my letters in +some other way.” +</p> + +<p> +Then Siebenkæs asked, more faintly still, “Have you no recollection at +all of a letter in which you assured me there was not the slightest +risk involved in my proposed change of name, none whatever?” +</p> + +<p> +“This is really quite ludicrous,” answered Blaise, “in that case there +could be no question about the matter!” +</p> + +<p> +Here Leibgeber clasped the father of the city with his two fingers as +if they had been iron rivets, grasped his shoulders as one does the +pommel of a saddle at mounting, clamped him firmly into his chair, and +thundered out, “You never wrote anything of the kind, did you? you +smooth-tongued, grey-headed old scoundrel! Stop your grunting, or I’ll +throttle you! never wrote the letter, eh? keep quiet—if you lift a +finger, my dog will tear your windpipe out. Answer me quietly you say +you never received any letter on the subject, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I had rather say nothing,” whispered Blasius, “evidence given under +coercion is valueless.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Siebenkæs drew his friend away from the Heimlicher, but Leibgeber +said to the dog, “Mordax! hooy, Sau.,” took the glass periwig from the +head of the servant of the state, broke off the principal curls of it, +and said to Siebenkæs (Saufinder lay ready to spring), “Screw him down +yourself, if the dog is not to do it, that he may listen to me. I want +to say one or two pretty things to him—don’t let him say ‘Pap!’—Herr +Heimlicher von Blasius, I have not the slightest intention of making +use of libellous or abusive language to you, or of spouting an +improvised pasquinade; I merely tell you, that you are an old rascal, a +robber of orphans, a varnished villain, and everything else of the +kind—for instance, a Polish bear, whose footmarks are just like a +human being’s.<a name="div2Ref_16" href="#div2_16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> The epithets which I here make use of, such as +scoundrel—Judas—gallows-bird” (at each word he struck the glass +turban like a cymbal against his other hand), “skunk, leech, +horse-leech—nominal definitions such as these are not abuse, and do not +constitute libel, firstly because, according to ‘L. § de injur.,’ the +grossest abuse may be uttered in jest, and I am in jest here—and +we may always make use of abusive language in maintaining our own +rights—see ‘Leyser.’<a name="div2Ref_17" href="#div2_17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> Indeed, according to Quistorp’s ‘Penal Code,’ +we may accuse a person of the gravest crimes without <i>animus +injurandi</i>, provided that he has not been already tried and punished +for them. And has your honesty ever been put on its trial and punished, +you cheating old grey-headed vagabond? I suppose you are like the +Heimlicher in Freyburg<a name="div2Ref_18" href="#div2_18"><sup>[18]</sup></a>—rather a different sort of man to you, it’s +to be hoped—and have half-a-dozen years or so, during which no one can +lay hold of you—but I’ve got hold of you to-day, hypocrite! Mordax!” +The dog looked up at this word of command. +</p> + +<p> +“Let him go, now,” Siebenkæs begged, compassionating the prostrate +sinner. +</p> + +<p> +“In a moment; but don’t you put me in a fury, please,” said Leibgeber, +letting fall the plucked wig, standing on it, and taking out his +scissors and black paper, “I want to be quite calm while I clip out a +likeness of the padded countenance of this portentous cotton-nightcap +of a creature, because I shall take it away with me as a <i>gage +d’amour</i>. I want to carry this <i>ecce homunculus</i> about with me half +over the world, and say to everybody, ‘Hit it, bang away at it well; +blessed is he who doth not depart this life till he hath thrashed +Heimlicher Blasius of Kuhschnappel; I would have done it myself if I +had not been far too strong.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I shan’t be able,” he went on, turning to Siebenkæs, and finishing a +good portrait, “to give that sneak and sharper there an account by word +of mouth of my success, for a whole year to come; but by that time the +one or two little touches of abuse which I have just lightly applied to +him will be covered by the statute of limitations, and we shall be as +good friends as ever again.” +</p> + +<p> +Here he unexpectedly requested Siebenkæs to stay by Saufinder—whom he +had constituted into a corps of observation by a motion of his +finger—as he was obliged to leave the room for a moment. On the last +occasion of his being in Blaise’s grand drawing-room (where he +displayed his magnificence before the Kuhschnappel world, great and +small), he had noticed the paper-hangings there, and an exceedingly +ingenious stove, in the form of the goddess of justice, Themis, who +does, indeed, singe as frequently as she merely warms. And this time he +had brought with him a camel’s-hair pencil, and a bottle of an ink made +from cobalt dissolved in aquafortis, with a little muriatic acid +dropped into it. Unlike the black cloth ink, which is visible at first +and disappears afterwards, the sympathetic ink here spoken of is +invisible at first, and only comes out a green colour on the paper when +it is warmed. Leibgeber now wrote with his camel’s-hair pencil and this +ink the following invisible notification on the paper which was closest +to the stove, or Themis. +</p> + +<p> +“The Goddess of Justice hereby protests in presence of this assembly +against being thus set up in effigy, and warmed and cooled (if not +absolutely hanged), at the pleasure of the Heimlicher von Blaise, who +is long since condemned at her inner secret tribunal. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“<span class="sc">Themis</span>.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber came away, leaving the silent seed of this Priestley’s green +composition behind him on the wall with the pleasing certainty that +next winter, some evening when the drawing-room was nicely warmed by +the goddess for a party, the whole dormant green crop would all of a +sudden shoot lustily forth. +</p> + +<p> +So he came back to the oratory again, finding Saufinder keeping up his +appointed official contemplation, and his friend maintaining his +observation of the dog. They then all took a most polite leave, and +even begged the Heimlicher not to come into the street with them, as it +mightn’t be so easy to keep Mordax from a bite or so there. +</p> + +<p> +When they got to the street Leibgeber said to his friend, “Don’t pull +such a long face about it—I shall keep flying backwards and forwards +to you, of course. Come through the gate with me—I must get across the +frontier of this country; let’s run, and get on to royal territory +before six minutes are over our heads.” +</p> + +<p> +When they had passed the gate, that is to say, the un-Palmyra-like +ruins of it, the crystal reflecting grotto of the August night stood +open and shining above the dark-green earth, and the ocean-calm of +nature stayed the wild storm of the human heart. Night was drawing and +closing her curtain (a sky full of silent suns, not a breath of breeze +moving in it), up above the world and down beneath it; the reaped corn +stood in the sheaves without a rustle. The cricket with his one +constant song, and a poor old man gathering snails for the snail-pits, +seemed to be the only things that dwelt in the far reaching darkness. +The fires of anger had suddenly gone out in the two friends’ hearts. +Leibgeber said, in a voice pitched two octaves lower, “God be thanked! +this writes a verse of peace round the storm bell within! the night +seems to me to have muffled my alarum drum with her black robe, and +softened it down to a funeral march. I am delighted to find myself +growing a little sad after all that anger and shouting.” +</p> + +<p> +“If it only hadn’t all been on my account, old Henry,” said Siebenkæs, +“your humorous fury at that barefaced old sinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“Though you are not so apt to shy your satire into people’s faces as I +am,” said Leibgeber, “you would have been in a greater rage if you had +been in my place. One can bear injustice to one’s self—particularly +when one has as good a temper as I have—but not to a friend. And +unluckily you are the martyr to my name to-day, and eyewitness and +blood-witness into the bargain. Besides, I should tell you that, as a +general rule, when once I am ridden by the devil of anger—or rather +when I have got on to <i>his</i> back—I always spur the brute nearly to +death, till he falls down, so that I mayn’t have to mount him again for +the next three months. However, I have poured <i>you</i> out a nice basin of +black broth, and left you sitting with the spoon in your hand.” +Siebenkæs had been dreading for some time that he would say something +about the 1200 gulden, those baptismal dues of his re-baptism, the +discount of his name. He therefore said, as cheerfully and pleasantly +as his heart, torn by this sudden, nocturnal parting, would let him, +“My wife and I have plenty of supplies in our little bit of a fortress +of Konigstein, and we can sow and reap there too. Heaven only grant +that we may have many a hard nut to crack; they give a delicious +flavour to the table-wine of our stale, flat, everyday life. I shall +bring my action to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +They both concealed their emotion at the approach of the moment of +parting under the cloak of comic speeches. These two counterparts came +to a column which had been erected by the Princess of —— on the spot +where, on her return from England, she had met her sister coming from +the Alps; and as this joyful souvenir of a meeting had a quite opposite +significance to-night, Leibgeber said, “Now, right about face—march! +Your wife is getting anxious—it’s past eleven o’clock. There, you +see, we have reached your boundary mark, your frontier fortress, +the gallows. I am off at once into Bayreuth and Saxony to cut my +crop—other people’s faces, to wit, and sometimes my own fool’s face +into the bargain. I shall most likely come and see you again, just for +the fun of the thing, in a year and a day, when the verbal libels are +pretty well out of date. By the by.” he added, hastily, “promise me on +your word of honour to do me one little favour.” +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs instantly did so. “Don’t send my deposit after me<a name="div2Ref_19" href="#div2_19"><sup>[19]</sup></a>—a +plaintiff has payments to make. So fare you well, dearest old man,” he +blurted huskily out, and after a hurried kiss, ran quickly down the +little hill with an air of assumed unconcern. His friend, bewildered +and forsaken, looked after the runner, without uttering a syllable. +When he got to the bottom of the hillock, the runner stopped, bent his +head low towards the ground, and—loosened his garters. +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t you have done that up here?” cried Siebenkæs, and went down +to him, and said, “We’ll go as far as the gallows hill together.” The +sand-bath and reverberating furnace of a noble anger made all their +emotions warmer to-day, just as a hot climate gives strength to poisons +and spices. As the <i>first</i> parting had caused their eyes to overflow, +they had nothing more to keep in control but voice and language. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure you feel quite well after being so much vexed?” said +Siebenkæs. “If the death of domestic animals portends the death of the +master of the house, as the superstition runs,” said Leibgeber, “I +shall live to all eternity, for my menagerie<a name="div2Ref_20" href="#div2_20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> of beasts is all alive +and kicking.” At last they stopped at the market house, beside the +place of execution. “Just up to the top,” said Siebenkæs, “no further.” +</p> + +<p> +When they came to the top of this boundary-hill of so many an unhappy +life—and when Siebenkæs looked down upon the green spotted stone altar +where so many an innocent sacrifice had been offered up, and thought, +in that dark minute, of the heavy blood drops of agony, the burning +tears which women who had killed their children<a name="div2Ref_21" href="#div2_21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> (and were +themselves put to death by the state and their lovers) had let fall +upon this their last and briefest rack of torture here in this field of +blood—and as he gazed from this cloudbank of life out over the broad +earth with the mists of night steaming up round its horizons and over +all its streams—he took his friend’s hand, and, looking to the free +starry heaven, said, “The mists of our life on earth <i>must</i> be resolved +into stars, up there at last, as the mists of the milky way part into +suns. Henry, don’t you yet believe in the soul’s immortality?”—“It +will <i>not</i> do yet, I can <i>not</i>,” Leibgeber replied. “Blasius, now, +hardly deserves to live <i>once</i>, let alone twice or several times. I +sometimes can’t help feeling as if a little piece of the other world +had been <i>painted on</i> to this, just to finish it off and make it +complete, as I’ve sometimes seen subsidiary subjects introduced in +fainter colours towards the edge of a picture, to make the principal +subject stand out from the frame, and to give it unity of effect. But +at this moment, human beings strike me as being like those crabs which +priests used to fasten tapers to and set them crawling about +churchyards, telling the people they were the souls of the departed. +Just so do we, in a masquerade impersonation of immortal beings, crawl +about over graves with our tapers of souls. Ten to one they go out at +last.” +</p> + +<p> +His friend fell on his heart, and said with vivid conviction, “We do +<i>not</i> go out! Farewell a thousand times. We shall meet where there is +no parting. By my soul! we do <i>not</i> go out. Farewell, farewell.” +</p> + +<p> +And so they parted. Henry passed slowly and with drooping arms through +the footpaths between the stubble-fields, raising neither hand nor eye, +that he might give no sign of sorrow. But a deep grief fell on +Siebenkæs, for men who rarely shed tears shed all the more when they do +weep. So he went to his house and laid his weary melting heart to rest +on his wife’s untroubled breast (there was not even a dream stirring +it). But far on into the forecourt of the world of dreams did the +thought of the days in store for Lenette attend him—and of his +friend’s night journey under the stars, which he would be looking up at +without any hope of ever being nearer to them; and it was chiefly for +his friend that his tears flowed fast. +</p> + +<p> +Oh ye two friends—thou who art out in the darkness there, and thou who +art here at home! But wherefore should I be continually harping back +upon the old emotion which you have once more awakened in me—the same +which in old days used to penetrate and refresh me so when I read as a +lad about the friendship of a Swift, an Arbuthnott and a Pope in their +letters? Many another heart must have been fired and aroused as mine +was at the contemplation of the touching, calm affection which the +hearts of these men felt for one another; cold, sharp, and cutting to +the outer world, in the inner land which was common to them they could +work and beat for each other; like lofty palm trees, presenting long +sharp spines towards the common world below them, but at their summits +full of the precious palm-wine of strong friendship. +</p> + +<p> +So, in their lesser degree, I think we may find something of a similar +kind to like and to admire in our two friends, Leibgeber and Siebenkæs. +We need not inquire very closely into the causes which brought about +their friendship; for it is hate, not love, which needs to be explained +and accounted for. The sources whence everything that is good wells +forth from this universe upwards to God himself, are veiled by a night +all thick with stars; but the stars are very far away. +</p> + +<p> +These two men, while as yet in the fresh, green springtime of +university life, at once saw straight through each other’s breasts into +each other’s hearts, and they attracted each other with their opposite +poles. What chiefly delighted Siebenkæs was Leibgeber’s firmness and +power, and even his capability of anger, as well as his flights and +laughter over every kind of sham grandeur, sham fine feeling, sham +scholarship. Like the condor, he laid the eggs (of his act or of his +pregnant saying) in no nest, but on the bare rock, preferring to live +without a name, and consequently always taking some other than his own. +On which account the poor’s advocate used to tell him, ten times over, +the two following anecdotes, just to enjoy his irritation at them. +</p> + +<p> +The first was, that a German professor in Dorpat, who was delivering a +eulogistic address on the subject of the reigning grand duke Alexander, +suddenly stopped in the middle of it, and gazed for a long time in +silence on a bust of that potentate, saying at length, “The speechless +heart has spoken.” +</p> + +<p> +The second was that Klopstock sent finely got-up copies of his +‘Messiah’ to schoolporters, with the request that the most deserving +among them might scatter spring-flowers on the grave of his own old +teacher, Stubel, while softly pronouncing his (Klopstock’s) name. To +which, if Leibgeber had anything to adduce on the subject, Siebenkæs +would go on to add that the poet had called up four new porters to give +them three readings apiece from his ‘Messiah,’ rewarding each with a +gold medal provided by a friend. After telling him this he would look +to see Leibgeber’s foaming and stamping at a person’s thus worshipping +himself as a species of reliquary full of old fingers and bones. +</p> + +<p> +What Leibgeber, on the other hand,—more like the Morlacks, who, as +Towinson and Forlis tell us, though they have but one word to express +both revenge and sanctification (osveta), do yet have their friends +betrothed to them with a blessing at the altar—chiefly delighted in +and loved about his satirical foster-brother was the diamond brooch +which in his case pinned together poetry, kindly temper, and a stoicism +which scorned this world’s absurdities. And lastly, each of them daily +enjoyed the gratification of knowing that the other understood him +completely and wonderfully, whether he were in jest or in earnest. But +it is not every friend who meets with another of this stamp. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch02a"></a>APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<p class="center">GOVERNMENT OF THE IMPERIAL MARKET BOROUGH OF KUHSCHNAPPEL. +</p> + +<p> +I have omitted, all through two chapters, to state that the free +imperial borough of Kuhschnappel (of which, it appears, there is a +namesake in the Erzgebirge country) is the thirty-second of the Swabian +towns which takes its seat on Swabia’s town-bench of thirty-one towns. +Swabia may look upon herself as being a hotbed and forcing-house of +imperial towns, these colonies, or hostelries, of the goddess of +freedom in Germany, whom persons of position worship as their household +goddess; and according to whose “election of grace” it is that poor +sinners are called to salvation. I must now, in this place, accede to +the universally expressed desire for an accurate sketch map of the +Kuhschnappel Government; though few readers, save people such as +Nikolai, Schlæzer and the like, can be expected to form an idea of the +difficulty I have experienced, and the sum I have had to expend in +postage, before getting hold of information somewhat more accurate than +that which is generally current on the subject of Kuhschnappel. Indeed, +imperial towns, like Swiss towns, always plaster over and stop up the +combs where their honey is stored, as though their constitutions were +stolen silver plate with the owner’s name still unobliterated—or as +though the little bits of towns and territories were fortresses (which +indeed they are as against their own inhabitants more than against +their enemies), of which strangers are not allowed to take sketches. +</p> + +<p> +The constitution of our noteworthy borough of Kuhschnappel seems to +have been the original rough draft or sketch which Bern (a place at no +great distance) has copied hers from, only with the pantograph on a +larger scale. For Bern, like Kuhschnappel, has her Upper House, or +supreme council, which decides upon peace and war, and has the power of +life and death just as in Kuhschnappel, and consists of chief +magistrates, treasurers, Venners, Heimlichers and counsellors, only +that there are more of them in Bern than in Kuhschnappel. Further, Bern +has her Lower House, consisting of presidents, deputies and pensioners, +subsidiary to the Upper. The two Chambers of Appeal, those of Woods and +Forests, Game Laws, and Reform, the Meat Tax and other commissions are +clearly but large text copies of the Kuhschnappel outlines. +</p> + +<p> +To speak the truth, however, I have drawn this comparison between these +two places solely with the view of being comprehensible (perhaps at the +same time agreeable) to the Swiss generally, and particularly to the +people of Bern. For in reality, Kuhschnappel rejoices in a much more +perfect and aristocratic constitution than Bern, such as was to be +found in a measure in Ulm and Nürnberg, though the stormy weather of +the revolution has rather kept them back than brought them forward. A +short time since, Nürnberg and Ulm were as fortunate as Kuhschnappel is +now, inasmuch as they were governed, not by the common, working +classes, but by people of family only, so that no mere citizen could +meddle with the matter in the least degree either in person or by +deputy. Now, unfortunately, it appears to be the case in both towns +that the cask of the state has had to be fresh tapped just about an +inch or so above the thick dregs of the common herd, because what came +from the tap <i>nearer the top</i> proved sour. However, it is impossible +for me to go on until I have cleared out of the way a much too +prevalent error respecting large towns. +</p> + +<p> +The Behemoths and Condors among towns—Petersburg, London, +Vienna—might, if they chose, establish universal equality of liberty +and liberty of equality; very few statisticians have been struck by +this idea, although it is so very clear. For a capital which it takes +two hours and a quarter to go round is, as it were, an Ætna-crater of +equivalent circumference for an entire country, and benefits the +neighbourhood of it as the volcano does, not only by what it <i>ejects</i> +(its eruptive matter), but by what it swallows up. It clears +the country in the first place of villages, and next of country +towns—which are primarily the outhouses and office-buildings of +capital cities—inasmuch as it pushes itself outwards in all directions +year by year, and gets grown over, fringed round, and walled about with +the villages. London, we know, has converted the neighbouring villages +into streets of itself; but in the lapse of centuries the long, +constantly extending arms of all great towns must enfold not only the +villages, but also the country towns, converting them into suburbs. +Now, in this process, the roads, fields and meadows which lie between +the giant city and the villages get covered over like a river-bed with +a deposit of stone-paving; and consequently the operations of +agriculture can no longer be carried on otherwise than in flower-pots +in the windows. Where there is no agriculture, I cannot see what the +agricultural population can become but unemployed idlers, such as no +state allows within its boundaries; and, prevention being better than +cure, the state will have to clear this agricultural population out of +the way before it sinks into this condition of idling, either by means +of letters inhibitory directed against the increase of population, or +by extermination, or by ennobling them into soldiery and domestics. In +a village which has undergone this process of being morticed into a +town like a lump of rubble,—or converted into a stave of the great tun +of Heidelberg in this manner—any country people that might be still to +the fore, would be as ludicrous as useless; the coral cells of the +villages must be cleared out before they attain the dignity of becoming +reefs or atolls of a town. +</p> + +<p> +When this is done, the hardest step towards equality has, no doubt, +been taken; the people of the country towns, a class the most hostile +of all classes, at heart, to equality—have next to be attacked and, if +possible, exterminated by the great town; this, however, is more a +matter of time than of good management. At the same time, what one or +two residency-towns have accomplished in this direction, is a good +beginning at all events. Could we attain to our ideal, however—could +we live to see the day when the two classes who are the most formidable +opponents of equality—the peasants, and the people of the smaller +towns—should have disappeared; and when not only the agricultural +races but the lower nobility, the small proprietors, should be +extinct—ah! then the world would be in the blissful enjoyment of an +equality of a nobler sort than that which obtained in France, where it +was merely a <i>plebeian</i> one. There would be an absolute equality if +pure nobility and collective humanity could rejoice in the possession +of <i>one</i> patent of nobility, and of real authentic <i>ancestors</i>. In +Paris, the revolution wrote (as people did in the most ancient times) +without capital letters; but if my golden age came to pass, the writing +would be as it was in somewhat <i>later</i> times than those just alluded +to, <i>all</i> capital letters, not, as at present, with capitals sticking +up like steeples among quantities of small letters. But though such a +lofty style, such an ennoblement of humanity as this may be nothing but +a beautiful dream, and though we must be content with the minor +consolation of seeing, in towns, the middle classes restricted to a +single street, as is now the case with the Jews; even that would be a +clear gain to the intellectual portion of mankind in the eyes of anyone +who considers what an accomplished, capable set of people the higher +nobility are. +</p> + +<p> +It is upon the smaller towns, however, that we can more confidently +rely than upon the great residency-towns, for aid in bringing about the +nobilisation of the collective human race, and this brings me back to +Kuhschnappel. People really seem to forget that it is too much to +expect that the four square versts or so which a residency-town +occupies shall be able to dominate, swallow up, and convert into +portions of itself, more than a thousand square miles of the +surrounding country (just as the boa-constrictor swallows animals +bigger than itself). London has not much above 600,000 inhabitants; +what a miserably small force compared to the 5½ millions of all +England, which that city has to contend with, and cut off the wings, +and supplies of, alone and unassisted—to say nothing of Scotland and +Ireland! This, however, does not apply to provincial towns; here the +number of villages, villagers, and burghers which have to be coerced, +starved, and put to rout, are in a fair proportion to the size of the +town, the numbers of the aristocracy or governing classes, who have to +execute the task, and work the smoothing plane which is to level the +surface of humanity. Here there is little difficulty in <i>precipitating</i> +the citizens (as if they were a kind of coarse dregs swimming in the +clear fluid of nobility); and when this precipitation is not +successfully accomplished, it is the aristocracy themselves who are to +blame, in that they often show mercy in the wrong place, and look upon +the Burgher-bank as a grassbank, the grass of which is, it is true, +grown only to be sat upon and pressed down, but is kept always watered, +in order that it may not wither from being so constantly sat upon. If +there were to be nothing left but the noblest classes, the citizenic +cinnamon-trees would be completely barked, by means of taxes and +levyings of contributions—(which none but plebeian authors term +“flaying” and “pulling the hide over the ears”),—and, the bark being +off, the trees of course wither and die. At the same time, this process +of aristocratization costs men. But in my opinion it would be cheaply +purchased by the few thousands of people it would cost, seeing that the +Americans, the Swiss, and the Dutch paid (so to speak) whole millions +of men “cash down,” on the battlefield, as the price of a freedom of a +much more restricted kind. The fault which is sometimes found with +modern battle pictures, namely that they are overcrowded with people, +can rarely be found with modern countries. We should rather notice the +clever manner in which many German states have, by <i>energetic</i> +treatment, <i>determined</i> their population, as morbid matter, in a +<i>downward</i> direction (as good physicians are wont to do), namely, down +to the United States of America, which are situated straight <i>below</i> +them. +</p> + +<p> +Kuhschnappel (to return to our subject) has the pull over hundreds of +other towns. I admit, as Nicolai’s assertion, that of the 60,000 which +Nürnberg contained there are but 30,000 left, and that is something; at +the same time it takes fifty burghers, and more, to be equivalent to +one aristocrat, which is much. Now I am in a position to show at any +moment by reference to registers of deaths and baptisms, that the +borough of Kuhschnappel contains almost as many aristocrats as +burghers, which is all the more wonderful when we reflect that the +former, on account of their appetites, find it a harder matter to live +than the latter. What modern town, I ask, can point to so many free +inhabitants? Were there not even in free Athens and Rome—in the West +Indies there were of course—more slaves than free men, for which +reason the latter did not dare to make the former wear any distinctive +dress? And are there not in all towns more tenants than noble +landlords, although the latter <i>ought</i>, one would think, to be in the +majority, since peasants and burghers grow only by nature, while +aristocrats are raised, both by nature, and by art (in the shape of +princely and imperial chanceries). If this appendix were not a +digression (and digressions are generally expected to be brief) I +should proceed to show, at some length, that in several respects +Kuhschnappel, if she does not surpass, is at least quite on a par with, +many of the towns of Switzerland; for instance, in a good method of +sharpening and lengthening the sword of justice, and, on the whole, in +her manner of wielding a good, spiked, knotty mace—in the tax she +levies on (ecclesiastical) corn, not that imported from abroad, but +that of home growth, to exclude <i>thought</i> and other (in an +ecclesiastical sense) rubbish of that sort—and even in her “green +market,” or trade in young men. As regards the latter, the reason why +the trade with France for young Kuhschnappelers to serve as porters and +defenders of the Crown has hitherto been so flat is, that the Swiss +have so terribly overdone the market with fine young fellows who go and +stand in front of all the doors and (in war time) in front of all the +cannons. Of course, were it not for this, there would be more doors +than one with a Kuhschnappeler standing and saying, “Nobody at home.” +(Indeed, here in my second edition, I can assert that Kuhschnappel +continues to maintain its title of <i>imperial market</i> town, like a +secondary electoral dignity, and keeps up its old protective laws +against the import of ideas and the export of information, and its +blood tithe; or young men tithe to France, just as Switzerland does, +which is like the keeper of the castle of the Wartburg, who keeps +constantly re-blackening the indelible mark of the ink which Luther +threw at the devil.) +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch03"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">LENETTE’S HONEYMOON—BOOK BREWING—SCHULRATH STIEFEL—MR. EVERARD—A DAY BEFORE THE FAIR—THE RED COW—ST. MICHAEL’S FAIR—THE +BEGGARS’ OPERA—DIABOLICAL TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS, OR THE MANNIKIN OF FASHION—AUTUMN JOYS—A NEW LABYRINTH. +</p> + +<p> +The world could not make a greater mistake than to suppose that our +common hero would be to be seen on the Monday sitting in a mourning +coach, in a mourning cloak, crape hat-band and scarf, and black +shoe-buckles, figuring as chief mourner at the sham funeral of his +happiness and his capital. +</p> + +<p> +Heavens! how <i>can</i> the world make such an exceedingly bad shot as that? +The advocate was not even in <i>quarter</i> mourning, let alone half; he was +in as good spirits as if he had this third chapter before him, and were +just beginning it, as I am. +</p> + +<p> +The reason was, that he had drawn up an able plaint against his +guardian, Blaise (enlivening it with sundry satirical touches, which +nobody but himself understood), and laid it before the Inheritance +Office. When we are in a difficulty, it is always so much gained if we +can but <i>do something or other</i>. Let fortune bluster in our faces with +ever so harsh and frosty an autumn wind—as long as it does not break +the fore joint of our wing (as in the case of the swans), our very +fluttering, though it may not transport us into a warmer climate, will +at all events have the effect of warming us a little. From motives of +kindness, Siebenkæs kept his wife in ignorance of the delay in the +settling of his heritage accounts, as well as of the old story of the +change of names; he thought there was very little likelihood of a +struggling advocate’s wife ever having an opportunity of looking over a +patrician’s shoulder into his family hand at cards. +</p> + +<p> +And, indeed, what could a man who had made a sudden plunge from out his +hermit’s holy-week of single blessedness, into the full honeymoon of +double blessedness wish for besides? Not until now had he been able to +hold his Lenette in both his arms rightly—hitherto his friend, always +fluttering backwards and forwards in life, had been held fast with his +<i>left</i> arm; but now, she was able to stretch herself out far more +comfortably in the chambers of his heart. And the bashful wife did this +as much as she dared. She confessed to him, albeit timidly, that she +was almost glad not to have that boisterous Saufinder lying under the +table and glaring out in that terrible way of his. Whether she +experienced a similar relief at the absence of his wild master, she +could not be brought to say. To the advocate she felt a good deal like +a daughter, and her great tall father could never have enough of her +quaint little ways. That, when he went out, she used to look after him +as long as he was in sight, was nothing in comparison to the way in +which she used to run out after him with a brush, when she noticed from +the window that there was such a quantity of street paving sticking to +his coat-tails that nothing would do but she must have him back again +into the house, and brush his back as clean as if the Kuhschnappel +municipality would charge him paving-tax if any of the mud were found +on him. He would take hold of the brush and stop it, and kiss her, and +say, “There’s a good deal <i>inside</i> as well; but nobody sees it there; +when I come back we’ll set to work and scrub some of <i>that</i> away.” +</p> + +<p> +Her maidenly obedience to his every wish and hint, her daughterly +observance and fulfilment of them, were more than he looked for or +required, indeed; but not too great for the love he bestowed in return. +“Senate clerk’s daughter,” he said, “you mustn’t be <i>too</i> obedient to +me; remember I’m not your father, a senate clerk, but a poor’s advocate +who has married you and signs himself Siebenkæs, to the best of his +belief.” +</p> + +<p> +“My poor dear father,” she answered, “used often to compose and write +down things too at home, himself, with his own hand, and then fair-copy +them beautifully afterwards.” But he enjoyed these crooked answers +which she used to make. And though, from sheer veneration of him, she +never understood a single one of the jokes which he was always making +about himself (for she gainsaid him when he satirically depreciated +himself, and agreed with him completely if he ironically lauded +himself), yet these mental provincialisms of hers pleased him not a +little. She would use such words as “fleuch” for “fliehe,” “reuch” and +“kreuch” for “riehe” and “kriehe;” religious antiquities out of +Luther’s Bible, which were valuable and enjoyable contributions to her +stock of idiosyncracies, and to the happiness of his honeymoon. One day +when he took a particularly pretty cap which she had tried on with +much satisfaction to each of her three cap-blocks, one after another +(she would often gently kiss these cap-blocks), and putting it on her +own little head before the looking-glass, said, “See how it looks on +your <i>own</i> head; perhaps that’s as good a block as the others,” she +laughed with immense delight, and said, “Now, you are always flattering +one!” +</p> + +<p> +Believe me, this naive failure of hers to see his joke so touched him +that he made a secret vow never to make another of the kind, except in +private to himself. But there was a greater honeymoon pleasure still. +This was that, when there came a fast day, Lenette would on no account +allow him to kiss her, when she came into the room (ready for church), +her white and red bloom of youth shining out with threefold beauty from +under her black lace head-dress, and the dark leafage of her dress. +</p> + +<p> +“Worldly thoughts of that kind,” she said, “weren’t at all proper +before service, when people had on their fast-day things; people must +wait!” +</p> + +<p> +“By heaven!” said Siebenkæs to himself, “may I stick a soup spoon five +inches long and three broad through my lower lip, like a North American +squaw, and go about with it there, if ever I begin spooning and kissing +the pious soul again, when she has a black dress on, and the bells are +ringing.” And though he wasn’t much of a churchgoer himself, he kept +his word. See how we men behave in matrimonial life, young ladies! +</p> + +<p> +From all which it will readily appear how perfectly happy the advocate +was during his honeymoon, when Lenette, in the most delightful manner, +did all those things for him which he used previously to have to do for +himself in a most miserable fashion and against the grain, making by +unwearied sweepings and brushings his dithyrambic chartreuse as clean +and level and smooth as a billiard-table. Whole honey-trees full of +cakes did she plant during the honeymoon; humming round him of a +morning like a busy bee, carrying wax into her little hive (while he +was going quietly on with his law-papers, building away at his +juridical wasp’s nest), forming her cells, cleaning them out, ejecting +foreign bodies, and mending chinks; he now and then looking out of his +wasp’s nest at the pretty little figure in the tidiest of household +dresses, at sight of which he would take his pen in his mouth, hold his +hand out to her across the ink-bottle, and say, “Only wait till the +afternoon comes and you’re sitting sewing—then, as I walk up and down, +I shall pay you with kisses to your heart’s content.” But that none of +my fair readers may be unhappy about the souring of the honey of this +moon which the conduct of that disinheriting blackguard Blaise might +bring about, let me just ask one question? Hadn’t Siebenkæs a whole +silver mine and a coining mill, in the shape of seven law suits all +going on, full of veins of rich ore? And hadn’t Leibgeber sent him a +military treasury chest on four wheels of fortune, containing two +spectacle dollars of Julius Duke of Brunswig, a Russian triple-dollar +of 1679, a tail or queue ducat—a gnat or wasp dollar—five vicariat +ducats, and a heap of Ephraimites? For he might melt down and +volatilise this collection of coins without a moment’s hesitation, +inasmuch as his friend had only pocketed them by way of a jest on the +people who pay a hundred dollars for one. They two had all things +corporeal and mental in common to an extent comprehensible by few. They +had arrived at that point where there is no distinction visible between +the giver and the receiver of a benefit, and they stepped across the +chasms of life bound together, as the crystal-seekers in the Alps tie +themselves to each other to prevent their falling into the ice clefts. +</p> + +<p> +One Lady Day, towards evening, however, he hit upon an idea which will +quite reassure all fair readers of his history who may be in a state of +anxiety about him, and which made <i>him</i> happier than the receipt of the +biggest basket of bread with little baskets of fruit in it would have +done—or a hamper of wine. He had felt sure all along that he <i>would</i> +hit upon an idea. Whenever he was in a difficulty of any kind, he +always used to say, “Now, I wonder what I shall hit upon <i>this</i> time; +for I <i>shall</i> hit upon something or other as sure as there are four +chambers in my brain.” The delightful idea in question was, that he +should do what I am doing at this moment—write a book; only his was to +be a satirical one.<a name="div2Ref_22" href="#div2_22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> A torrent of blood rushed through the opened +sluices of his heart, right in amongst the wheels and mill-machinery of +his ideas, and the whole of the mental mechanism rattled, whirred, and +jingled in a moment—a peck or two of material for the book was ground +on the spot. +</p> + +<p> +I know of no greater mental tumult—hardly of any sweeter—which can +arise in a young man’s being, than that which he experiences when he is +walking up and down his room, and forming the daring resolution that he +will take a book of blank paper and make it into a manuscript; indeed +it is a point which might be argued whether Winckelmann, or Hannibal +the great general, strode up and down <i>their</i> rooms at a greater pace +when they respectively formed the (equally daring) resolution that they +would go to Rome. Siebenkæs, having made up his mind to write a +‘Selection from the Devil’s Papers,’ was forced to run out of the +house, and three times round the market-place, just to fix his +fluttering, rushing ideas into their proper grooves again by the +process of tiring his legs. He came back wearied by the glow within +him—looked to see if there was enough white paper in the house for his +manuscript—and running up to his Lenette, who was tranquilly working +away at a cap, gave her a kiss before she could well take the needle +out of her mouth—last thorn upon the rose-tree! During the kiss she +quietly gave a finishing stitch to the border of the cap (squinting +down at it the best way she could without moving her head). +</p> + +<p> +“Rejoice with me!” he cried, “come and dance about with me! to-morrow +I’m going to begin a work, a book! Roast the calf’s head to-night, +though it be a breach of our ten commandments.” For he and she, on the +Wednesday before, had formed themselves into a committee on food +regulations, and, of the Thirty-nine articles of domestic economy, +which had then been passed and subscribed to, one was that, +Brahminlike, they were to do without meat at supper. +</p> + +<p> +But he had the greatest difficulty in getting her to understand how it +was that he made out that he would be able to procure her another +calf’s head with a single sheet of the ‘Selections from the Devil’s +Papers,’ and that he was perfectly justified in issuing a dispensation +from that evening’s fast; for like the common herd of mankind, or like +the printers, Lenette thought that a written book was paid for at the +same rate as a printed one, and that the compositor got rather more +than the author. She had never in her life had the slightest idea of +the enormous sums which authors are paid nowadays; she was like +Racine’s wife, who did not know what a line of poetry or a tragedy was, +although she kept house upon them. For my part, however, I should never +lead to the altar, or into my home as my wife, any woman who wasn’t +capable of at least completing any sentence which death should knock me +over with his hour-glass in the middle of,—or who wouldn’t be +unspeakably delighted when I read to her learned Göttingen gazettes, or +universal German magazines, in which I was bepraised, more than I +deserved perhaps. +</p> + +<p> +The rapture of authorship had set all Siebenkæs’s blood-globules into +such a flow, and all his ideas into such a whirlwind this whole evening +that, in the condition of vividness of fueling and fancy in which he +was (a condition which in him often assumed the appearance of temper), +he would instantly have flown out and exploded like so much fulminating +gold at everything of a slow moving kind which he came across—such as +the servant girl’s heavy dawdling step, or the species of dropsy with +which her utterance was afflicted;—but that he at once laid hold on a +precious sedative powder for the over-excitement caused by happiness, +and took a dose of it. It is easier to communicate an impetus and a +rapid flow to the slow-gliding blood of a heavy, sorrowful heart, than +to moderate and restrain the billowy, surging, foaming current which +rushes through the veins in happiness; but he could always calm +himself, even in the wildest joy, by the thought of the inexhaustible +Hand which bestowed it, and that gentle tenderness of heart wherewith +our eyes are drooped to earth as we remember the invisible, eternal +Benefactor of all hearts. At such a time the heart, softened by +thankfulness and by joyful tears, will speak its gratitude by at least +being kindlier towards all mankind, if in no other way. That fierce, +untamed delight, which is what Nemesis avenges, can best be kept within +due bounds by this sense of gratitude; and those who have died of joy +would either <i>not</i> have died at all, or would have died of a <i>better</i> +and lovelier joy, if their hearts had first been softened by a grateful +heavenward gaze. +</p> + +<p> +His first and best thanksgiving for the new, smooth, beautiful banks, +between which his life-stream had now been led, took the form of a +zealous and careful drawing up of a defence which he had to prepare in +the case of a girl charged with child-murder, to save her from torture +on the rack. The state-physician of the borough had condemned her to +the “trial by the lungs,” a neither more nor less suitable punishment +than the “trial by water” (which used to be inflicted on witches). +</p> + +<p> +Calm spring-days of matrimony, peaceful and undisturbed, laid down +their carpet of flowers for the feet of these two to tread upon. +Only there sometimes appeared under the window, when Lenette was +stretching herself and her white arm out of a morning, and slowly +accomplishing the fastening back of the outside shutters, a gentleman +in flesh-coloured silk. +</p> + +<p> +“I really feel quite ashamed to stretch,” she said; “there’s a +gentleman always standing in the street, and he takes off his hat, and +notes one down just as if he were the meat appraiser.” +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath Stiefel kept, on the school Saturday holidays, the +solemn promise he had made on the wedding-day to come and see them +often, and at all events to be sure and come on the Saturdays. I think +I shall call him Peltzstiefel (Furboots) as a pleasing variety for the +ear—seeing that the whole town gave him that name on account of the +gray miniver, faced with hareskin, which he wore on his legs by way of +a portable wood-economising stove. Well, Peltzstiefel, the moment he +came in at the door, fastened joy-flowers together into a nosegay, and +stuck them into the advocate’s button-bole, by appointing him on the +spot his collaborateur on the ‘Kuhschnappel Indicator, Heavenly +Messenger, and School Programme Review’—a work which ought to be +better known, so that the works recommended by it might be so too. This +newspaper engagement of Siebenkæs is a great pleasure to me; it will at +any rate bring my hero in sixpence or so towards a supper now and then. +The Schulrath, who was editor of this paper, had a high sense of the +power and responsibility of his post; but Siebenkæs had now risen to +the dignity of an author—the only being who in his eyes was superior +even to a reviewer—for Lenette had told him on the way to church that +her husband was going to have a great thick book printed. The Schulrath +considered the ‘Salzburg Literary Gazette’ of the period the +apocryphal, and the ‘Jena Literary Gazette’ the canonical scriptures: +the single voice of one reviewer was, for <i>his</i> ears, multiplied by the +echo in the critical judgment hall into a thousand voices. His deluded +imagination multiplied the head of one single reviewer into several +Lernæan heads, as it was believed of old that the devil used to +surround the heads of sinners with delusive <i>false</i> heads, that the +executioner might miss his stroke at them. +</p> + +<p> +The fact that a reviewer writes anonymously gives to a single +individual’s opinions the weight and authority they would possess, if +arrived at by a whole council; but then if his name were put at the +end, for instance, “X.Y.Z., Student of Divinity,” instead of “New +Universal German Library,” it would weaken the effect of the divinity +student’s learned laying down of the law to too great an extent. The +Schulrath paid court to my hero on account of his satirical turn; for +he himself, a very lamb in common life, transformed himself into a +wehrwolf in a review article; which is frequently the case with +good-tempered men when they write, particularly on <i>humaniora</i> and such +like subjects. As indeed, peaceful shepherd races (according to Gibbon) +are fond of making war, and of beginning it, or just as the Idyllic +painter, Gessner, was himself a biting caricaturist. +</p> + +<p> +And our hero for his part afforded Stiefel a great pleasure this +evening, as well as holding out to him the prospect of many more such, +when he took from Leibgeber’s collection of coins a gnat or wasp +dollar, and gave it to him, not as a douceur for his appointment +to the critical wasp’s nest, but that he might turn it into small +change. The Schulrath who, being himself the zealous “Silberdiener” +(master of the plate and jewels) of a dollar-cabinet of his own, +would have been delighted if money had existed solely for the +sake of cabinets—(meaning, however, numismatic, not political, +cabinets)—sparkled and blushed delighted over the dollar, and declared +to the advocate (who only wanted the absolute value of it, not the +coin-fancier’s price) that he considered this a piece of true +friendship. “No,” answered Siebenkæs, “the only piece of true +friendship about the matter is Leibgeber giving <i>me</i> the dollar.” “But +I’ll give you certainly three dollars for it, if you like to ask it,” +said Stiefel. Lenette, delighted at Stiefel’s delight, and at his +kindly feeling, and secretly giving her husband a push as an admonition +not to give way, here struck in with an amount of determination which +astonishes me, “But my husband’s not going to do anything of the kind, +I assure you; a dollar’s a dollar.” “But,” said Siebenkæs, “I ought +rather to ask you only a <i>third</i> of the price, if I’m going to hand +over my coins to you one at a time in this way.” Ye dear souls! If +people’s “yeses” in this world were only always such as your “buts.” +</p> + +<p> +Stiefel, confirmed bachelor though he was, wasn’t going to let himself +be found wanting, on such a delightful occasion as this, at all events, +in proper politeness towards the fair sex, least of all towards a woman +whom he had begun to be so fond of, even when he was bringing her home +to be married, and whom he liked twice as much now that she was the +wife of such a dear friend, and was such a dear friend herself too. He +therefore adroitly led her to join in the conversation (which had +previously been too deep and scholarly for her) by using the three +cap-blocks as stepping-stones over to the journal of fashions; only he +slid back again sooner than he might have done to a more ancient +journal of fashions, that of Rubenius on the ‘Costume of the ancient +Greeks and Romans.’ He said he should be happy to lend her his sermons +every Sunday, as advocates don’t deal in theology much. And when she +was looking on the floor at her feet for the snuffers which had fallen, +he held the candle down that she might see. +</p> + +<p> +The next Sunday was an important day for the house (or rather rooms) of +Siebenkæs, for it introduced thereto a grander character than any who +have appeared hitherto, namely the Venner (Finance Councillor)—Mr. +Everard Rosa von Meyern, a young member of the aristocracy, who went +daily in and out at Heimlicher von Blaise’s to “learn the routine of +official business;” he was also engaged to be married to a poor niece +of the Heimlicher’s, who was being brought up and educated for his +heart in another part of Germany. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the Venner was a character of consequence in the borough of +Kuhschnappel as well as in our ‘Thorn-piece,’ and this in every +political point of view. In a corporeal point of view he was much less +so. His body was stuck through his flowered garments much like a piece +of stick through a village nosegay; under the shining wing-covers of +his waistcoat (in itself a perfect animal-picture)<a name="div2Ref_23" href="#div2_23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> there +pulsated a thorax, perpendicular, if not absolutely concave, and his +legs had, all told, about the same amount of calf as those wooden ones +which stocking-makers put into their windows as an advertisement. +</p> + +<p> +The Venner gave the advocate to understand, in a cold and politely rude +manner, that he had merely come to relieve him from the task of +defending the case of child-murder, as he had so much to attend to +besides. But Siebenkæs saw through this pretence with great ease. It +was a well-known circumstance that the girl accused of this crime had +adopted as the father of her child (now flown, away above this earth) a +certain commercial traveller, whose name neither she nor the documents +connected with her case could mention; but that the real father—who, +like a young author, was bashful about putting his name to his <i>pièce +fugitive</i>—was no other than the emaciated Venner, Everard Rosa von +Meyern himself. There are certain things which a whole town will +determine and make up its mind to ignore; and one of these was Rosa’s +authorship. Heimlicher von Blaise knew that Siebenkæs was aware of it, +however, and feared that he might, out of revenge for the affair of the +inheritance, purposely make a poor defence of the girl, that the shame +and disgrace of her end might fall upon his relative, Meyern’s +shoulders. What a terrible, mean suspicion! +</p> + +<p> +And yet the purest minds are sometimes driven to entertain such +suspicions. Fortunately Siebenkæs had already got the poor mother’s +lightning-conductor all ready forged and set up. When he showed it to +this false bridegroom of the supposed child-murderess, the latter +immediately declared that she could not have found an abler guardian +saint among all the advocates in the town; to which author and reader +can both add “nor one who should be actuated by worthier motives,” as +we know he did it as a thank-offering to Heaven for the first idea of +the ‘Devil’s Papers.’ +</p> + +<p> +At this juncture, the advocate’s wife came suddenly back from the +adjoining bookbinder’s room, where she had been paying a flying visit. +The Venner sprang to meet her at the threshold with a degree of +politeness which couldn’t have been carried further, inasmuch as she +had to open the door before he could reach her. He took her hand, +which, in her respect and awe of him, she half permitted, and kissed it +stooping, but twisted his eyes up to her face, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Meddem! I have had this beautiful hand in mine for several days.” +</p> + +<p> +It now appeared, from what he said, that he was the identical +flesh-coloured gentleman who had stolen her hand with his drawing-pen +when she had had it out of the window; because he had been anxious to +get a pretty Dolce’s hand for a three-quarter portrait of the young +lady he was engaged to, and hadn’t known what to do; her <i>head</i> he was +doing from memory. He then took off his gloves, in which alone he had +dared as yet to touch her (as many of the early Christians used only to +touch the Eucharist in gloves from reverence therefor), displaying the +fires of his rings and the snow of his skin. To preserve the whiteness +of the latter from the sun, he hardly ever took his gloves off, except +in winter when the sun has scarcely power to burn. +</p> + +<p> +The Kuhschnappel aristocracy, particularly its younger members, give a +willing obedience to the commandment which Christ gave to His apostles, +to “greet no man by the way,” and the Venner observed the required +degree of incivility towards the husband, though not by any means to +the wife, towards whom his condescension was infinite. An inborn +characteristic of Siebenkæs’s satirical disposition was a fault which +he had of being too polite and kindly with the lower classes, and too +forward and aggressive with the upper. He had not as yet sufficient +knowledge of the world to enable him to determine the precise angle at +which his back should bend before the various great ones of the place, +wherefore he preferred to go about bolt upright, though he did so +against the promptings of his kind heart. An additional cause was, that +the profession to which he belonged being of a belligerent nature, has +a tendency to embolden those who belong to it; an advocate has the +advantage of never requiring to employ one himself, and consequently he +is often inclined to treat even the grandest folks with some amount of +coolness, unless they happen to be judges or clients, at the disposal +of both of which classes of society his best services are at all times +ready to be placed. Notwithstanding which, it generally happened that, +in Siebenkæs’s kindly feeling to all mankind, his moveable bridge got +shoved down so low under his tightened strings that the notes given out +by them became quite low and soft. On the present occasion, however, it +was much more difficult to be polite to the Venner (whose designs as +regarded Lenette he was compelled to see) than to be rude to him. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, he had an inborn detestation for dressy men although—just, +the contrary feeling for dressy women—so that he would often sit and +stare for a long time at the little Fugel-mannikins of dress in the +fashion journals, just to get properly angry at them; and he would +assure the Kuhschnappelers that there was nobody whom he should so +delight in playing practical jokes upon as on such a mannikin—yea, in +insulting him, or even doing him an injury (to the extent of a good +cudgelling). Also it had always been a source of delight to him that +Socrates and Cato walked barefoot about in the market-place; going +<i>bareheaded</i>, on the other hand (<i>chapeau bas</i>), he did not like half +so much. +</p> + +<p> +But, ere he could utter himself otherwise than by making faces, the +wooden-head of a Venner stroked his sprouting beard, and in a distant +manner graciously offered himself to the advocate in the capacity of +cardinal protector or mediator in the Blaise inheritance business; this +he did, of course, partly to blind the advocate’s eyes, and partly to +impress upon him how immeasurably inferior was his station. The latter, +however, shuddering at the idea of taking a gnome of this kind for +paraclete and household angel, said to him (but in Latin)— +</p> + +<p> +“In the first place I must <i>insist</i> that my wife shall not hear a +syllable about that insignificant potato quarrel. And moreover, in any +legal question I scorn and despise anybody’s assistance but a legal +friend’s, and in this instance <i>I</i> am my own legal friend. I fill an +official position here in Kuhschnappel; it is true, the official +position by no means fills <i>me</i>.” The latter play upon words he +expressed by means of a Latin one, which displayed such an unusual +amount of linguistic ability, that I should almost like to quote it +here. The Venner, however, who could neither construe the pun nor the +rest of the speech with the ease with which we have read it here, +answered at once (so as to escape without exposing his ignorance) in +the same language, “Imo, immo,” which he meant for yes. Firmian then +went on, in German, saying, “Guardian and ward, intimate as their +connection should be, in this case came into contact to an extent +almost too great to be pleasant; although, no doubt, there <i>have</i> been +cases before where one cousin has cozened another:<a name="div2Ref_24" href="#div2_24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> however, the +very members of ecclesiastical councils have come to fisticuffs before +now, <i>e. g</i>. at Ephesus in the fifteenth century. Indeed, the Abbot +Barsumas and Dioscurus, Bishop of Alexandria, men of position, +pummelled the good Flavian on that very occasion till he was as dead as +a herring.<a name="div2Ref_25" href="#div2_25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> And this was on a Sunday too, a day on which, in these +absurd old times, a sacred truce was put to quarrels and differences of +every description; though now, Sundays and feast-days are the very days +when the peace is broken; the public-house bells and the tinkling of +the glasses ring the truce <i>out</i>, and people pummel each other, so that +the law gets <i>her</i> finger into the pie. In old days, people multiplied +the number of saints’ days for the sake of stopping fights, but the +fact is that everybody connected with the legal profession, Herr von +Meyern (who <i>must</i> have <i>something</i> to live upon), ought to petition +that a peaceable working-day or two might be abolished now and then, so +that the number of rows might be increased, and with them the fines and +the fees in like ratio. Yet who thinks of such a thing, Venner?” +</p> + +<p> +He was quite safe in spouting the greater part of this before Lenette; +she had long been accustomed to understanding only a half, a fourth, or +an eighth part of what he said; as for the <i>whole</i> Venner, she gave +herself no concern about him. When Meyern had taken his departure with +frigid politeness, Siebenkæs, with the view of helping to advance him +in his wife’s good opinion, extolled his whole and undivided love for +the entire female sex (though engaged to be married), and more +particularly his attachment to that preliminary bride of his, who was +now in the condemned cell of the prison; this, however, rather seemed +to have the effect of <i>lowering</i> him in her good opinion. +</p> + +<p> +“Thou good, kind soul, may you always be as faithful to yourself and to +me!” said he, taking her to his heart. But she didn’t <i>know</i> that she +had been faithful, and said, “to whom should I be <i>un</i>faithful?” +</p> + +<p> +From this day onwards to Michaelmas Day, which was the day of the +borough fair, fortune seems to have led our <i>pathway</i>, I mean the +reader’s and mine, through no very special flower-beds to speak of, but +merely along the smooth green turf of an English lawn, one would +suppose on purpose that the fair on Michaelmas Day may suddenly arise +upon our view as some shining, dazzling town starts up out of a valley. +Very little did occur until then; at least, my pen, which only +considers itself bound to record incidents of some importance, is not +very willing to be troubled to mention that the Venner Meyern dropped +in pretty often at the bookbinder’s (who lived under the same roof with +the Siebenkæses)—he merely came to see whether the ‘Liaisons +Dangereuses’ were bound yet. +</p> + +<p> +But that Michaelmas! Truly the world shall remember it. And in fact the +very eve of it was a time of such a splendid and exquisite quality that +we may venture to give the world some account of it. +</p> + +<p> +Let the world <i>read</i> the account of this eve of preparation at all +events, and then give its vote. +</p> + +<p> +On this eve of the fair all Kuhschnappel (as all other places are at +such a time) was turned into a workhouse and house of industry for +women; you couldn’t have found a woman in the whole town either sitting +down, or at peace, or properly dressed. Girls the most given to reading +opened no books but needle-books to take needles out, and the only +leaves they turned over were paste ones to be put on pies. Scarcely a +woman took any dinner; the Michaelmas cakes and the coming enjoyment of +them were the sole mainspring of the feminine machinery. +</p> + +<p> +On these occasions women may be said to hold their exhibitions of +pictures, the cakes being the altar-pieces. Everyone nibbles at and +minutely inspects these baked escutcheons of her neighbour’s nobility; +and each has, as it were, her cake attached to her, as a medal is, or +the lead tickets on bales of cloth, to indicate her value. They +scarcely eat or drink anything, it is true, thick coffee being their +consecrated sacrament wine, and thin transparent pastry their wafers; +only the latter (in their friend’s and hostess’s houses) tastes best, +and is eaten almost with fondness when it has turned out hard and stony +and shot and dagger proof—or is burnt to a cinder—or, in short, is +wretched from some cause or other; they cheerfully acknowledge all the +failures of their dearest friends, and try to comfort them by taking +them to their own houses and treating them to something of a <i>very +different</i> kind. +</p> + +<p> +As for our Lenette, she, my dear lady reader, has always been a baker +of such a sort that male connoisseurs have preferred her crust, and +female connoisseurs her crum, both classes maintaining that no one but +she (and yourself, dearest) could bake anything like either. The +kitchen fire was this salamander’s second element, for the first and +native element of this dear nixie was water. To be scouring with sand, +and squattering and splattering in it, in a great establishment like +Siebenkæs’s (who had devoted all Leibgeber’s Ephraimites to the keeping +of this feast), was quite her vocation. No kiss could be applied to her +glowing face on such a day—and indeed she had her hands pretty full, +for at ten o’clock the butcher came bringing more work with him. +</p> + +<p> +The world will be glad (I’m perfectly certain in my own mind) if +I just give them a very short account of this business—<i>who</i> could +have done it better, for that matter? The facts of it were these: at +the beginning of summer the four fellow lodgers had clubbed together +and bought a cow in poor condition which they had then put up to +fatten. The bookbinder, the cobbler, the poor’s advocate and the +hairdresser—between whom and his tenants there was this distinction, +that they owed <i>their</i> rent to <i>him</i>, whereas he owed <i>his</i> to +his +creditors—caused to be prepaid and drawn up by a skilful hand (which +was attached to the arm of Siebenkæs) an authentic instrument (here +KOLBE the word-purist will snarl at poor innocent me in his usual +manner for employing foreign words in a document based on the Roman +law) relative to the life and death of the cow; in which instrument the +four contracting parties aforesaid—who all stood attentively round the +document, he who was sitting and drawing it excepted—bound and engaged +themselves in manner following, that is to say, that— +</p> + +<p> +1stly. Each of the four parties interested, as aforesaid, in the said +cow might and should have the privilege of milking her alternately. +</p> + +<p> +2ndly. That this Cooking or Fattening Society might and should defray +from a common treasury chest the price of said cow, the cost of the +carriage of implements and provisions, and maintenance generally of the +same; and +</p> + +<p> +3rdly. That the allied powers as aforesaid should not only on the day +before Michaelmas, the 28th September, 1785, slaughter the said cow, +but further that each quarter of the same should then and there be +further divided into four quarters, conformably to the lex agraria, for +partition among the said parties to the said contract. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs prepared four certified copies of this treaty, one for each; +he never wrote anything with graver pleasure. All that now remained to +be performed of the contract by the house association of our four +evangelists, who had collectively adopted as their armorial crest or +emblematic animal, one single joint-stock beast, namely, the female of +that of Saint Luke—was the third article of it. +</p> + +<p> +However, I know the learned classes are panting for my fair, so I shall +only dash down a hurried sketch of my Man-and-Animal piece (Kolbe of +course goes on taking me to task). +</p> + +<p> +That Septembriseur, the butcher, did his part of the business well, +though it was at the close of Fructidor—the four messmates looking on +throughout the operation, as also did old Sabine, who did a good deal, +and got something for it. The quadruple alliance regaled itself on the +slain animal at a general picnic, to which each contributed something +in order that the butcher might be included gratis; and it is +undeniable that one member of the league, whom I shall name hereafter, +attended this picnic in a frame of mind and in a costume barely serious +enough for the occasion. The slaughter confederation then set to +working its division sum, according to the number of its members, and +the golden calf round which their dance was executed was cut, up with +the appropriate heraldic cuts. Then the whole thing was over. I think I +can say nothing more laudatory of the manner in which the whole process +of zootomic division was carried out than what Siebenkæs, an interested +party, said himself, viz., “It’s to be wished that the twelve tribes of +Israel, as well as, in later times, the Roman empire, had been divided +into as many and as fair divisions as our cow and Poland have been.” +</p> + +<p> +I shall be doing ample justice to the cow’s embonpoint if I merely +mention that Fecht the cobbler uttered a panegyric which commenced with +the most lively and vigorous oaths, and the statement that she was an +(adjective) bag of skin and bones, and ended with an assurance, uttered +in mild and pious accents that Heaven had indeed favoured the poor +beast, and “blessed us unworthy sinners above measure.” A frolicsome +cult by nature, he had had the heavy coach-harness of pietism put on to +him, and was consequently obliged to keep softening down the “strong +language” which came naturally to him into the pious sighs appropriate +to his “converted state.” And it was to the frame of mind and the +costume of this very FECHT that I made allusion above as being barely +suitable to the occasion, for I’m sorry to say he had no breeches on +him the whole day of this great slaughter, but ran up and down the +slaughter-house in a white frieze frock of his wife’s, having a strange +general effect of looking something like his own better half. However, +the members of the association didn’t take any offence; he couldn’t +help it, because while he was going about got up in this Amazon’s +<i>demi-negligée</i>, and presenting this hermaphrodite appearance, his own +black-leather leg-cases were in the dye pot, being prepared for a +reissue. +</p> + +<p> +The poor’s advocate had begged Lenette (about a quarter past four in +the afternoon) not to go on working herself to death, and never to mind +bothering about any supper, as he was going to be miserly for once, +save himself a supper tonight, and sup upon eighteen penn’orth of +pastry: but the busy soul kept running about brushing and sweeping, and +by six o’clock they were both lying resting in the leather arms of—a +big easy chair (for he had no flesh and she no bones), and looking +around them with that expression of tranquil happiness which you may +see in children while eating, at the room in its state of mathematical +order, at the way in which everything in it was shining, at the pastry +new-moon-crescents in their hands, and at the liquid burnished gold (or +rather foilgold<a name="div2Ref_26" href="#div2_26"><sup>[26]</sup></a>) of the setting sun creeping up and up upon the +gleaming tin dishes. There they rested and reposed like cradled +children, with the screeching, clattering, twelve herculean labours of +the rest of the people of the house going on all round them; and the +clearness of the sky and the newly cleaned windows added a full +half-hour to the length of the day; the bell-hammer, or tuning-hammer +of the curfew bell gently let down the pitch of their melodious wishes +till they lapsed into dreams. +</p> + +<p> +At ten o’clock they woke up and went to bed...! +</p> + +<p> +I quite enjoy this little starry night picture myself; though my head +has reflected it all glimmery and out of focus, as the gilt hemisphere +of my watch does the evening sun when I hold it up to it. Evening is +the time when we weary, hunted men long to be at rest; it is for the +evening of the day, for the evening of the year (autumn), and for the +evening of life, that we lay up our hard-earned harvests, and with such +eager hopes! But hast thou never seen in fields, when the crops were +gathered, an image and emblem of thyself—I mean the autumn daisy, the +flower of harvest; she delays her blossom till the summer is past and +gone, the winter snows cover her before her fruit appears, and it is +not till the—coming spring that that fruit is ripe! +</p> + +<p> +But see how the roaring, dashing surges of the fair-day morning come +beating upon our hero’s bedposts! He comes into the white, shining +room, which Lenette had stolen out of bed like a thief before midnight +to wash while he was in his first sleep, and had sanded all over like +an Arabia; in which manner she had her own way while he had his. On a +fair-day morning I recommend everybody to open the window and lean out, +as Siebenkæs did, to watch the rapid erection and hiring of the wooden +booths in the market-place, and the falling of the first drops of the +coming deluge of people, only let the reader observe that it wasn’t by +my advice that my hero, in the very arrogance of his wealth (for there +were samples of every kind of pastry which the house contained on a +table behind him), called down to many of the little green aristocratic +caterpillars whom he saw moving along in the street with even greater +arrogance than his own, and whose natural history he felt inclined to +learn by a look at their faces. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, sir, will you just be good enough to look at that house, that +one there—do you notice anything particular?” +</p> + +<p> +If the caterpillar lifted up its physiognomy, he could peruse and study +it at his ease,—which was of course his object. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t notice anything particular?” he would ask. +</p> + +<p> +When the insect shook its head, he concurred with it, and did the same +up at the window, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“No, of course not! I’ve been looking at it for the last twelve months +myself, and can’t see anything particular about it; but I didn’t choose +to believe my own eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +Giddypated Firmian! Your seething foam of pleasure may soon drop down +and disappear—as it did that Saturday when the cards were left. As +yet, however, his little drop of must which he has squeezed out of the +forenoon hours was foaming and sparkling briskly. The landlord moved at +a gallop, casting (with his powder-sowing machine) seed into a fruitful +soil. The bookbinder conveyed his goods (consisting partly of empty +manuscript books, partly of still emptier song books, partly of +“novelties,” in almanacs) to the fair by land-carriage in a +wheelbarrow, which he had to make two journeys with in going, but only +one in returning in the evening, because then he had got rid of his +almanacs to purchasers and to sellers (almanacs are the greatest of all +novelties, or pieces of news—for there is nothing in all the long +course of time so new as the new year). Old Sabel had set up her East +India house, her fruit garner, and her cabinet of tin rings at the town +gate; she wouldn’t have let that warehouse of hers go to her own +brother at a lower figure than half-a-sovereign. The cobbler put a +stitch in no shoe on this St. Michael’s Day except his wife’s. +</p> + +<p> +Suck away, my hero, at your nice bit of raffinade sugar of life, and +empty your forenoon sweetstuff spoon, not troubling your head about the +devil and his grandmother, although the pair of them should be thinking +(after the nature of them) about getting a bitter potion, even a poison +cup, made ready and handing it to you. +</p> + +<p> +But his greatest enjoyment is still to come, to wit, the numberless +beggar people. I will describe this enjoyment, and so distribute it. +</p> + +<p> +A fair is the high mass which the beggars of all ranks and classes +attend; when it is still a day or two off, all the footsoles that have +nothing to walk upon but compassionate hearts, are converging towards +the spot like so many radii, but on the morning of the fair-day itself +the whole annual congress of beggardom and the column of cripples are +fairly on the march. Anyone who has seen <i>Fŭrth</i>, or been in +Elwangen during P. Gassner’s government, may cut these few leaves out +of his copy; but no one else has any idea of it till I proceed and lead +him in at the town-gate of Kuhschnappel. +</p> + +<p> +The street choral service and the vocal serenades now commence. The +blind sing like blinded singing-birds—better, but louder; the lame +walk; the poor preach the gospel themselves; the deaf and dumb make a +terrible noise, and ring in the feast with little bells—everybody +sings his own tune in the middle of everybody else’s—a paternoster is +clattering at the door of every house, and in the rooms inside nobody +can hear himself swear. Whole cabinets of small coppers are lavished on +one hand, pocketed on the other. The one-legged soldiery spice their +ejaculatory prayers with curses, and blaspheme horribly, because people +don’t give them enough—in brief, the borough which had made up its +mind for a day’s enjoyment, is invaded and almost taken by storm by the +rabble of beggars. +</p> + +<p> +And now the maimed and the diseased begin to appear. Whoever has a +wooden jury-leg under him, sets it and his long third leg and +fellow-labourer the crutch, in motion towards Kuhschnappel, and drives +and plants his sharp-pointed timber toe into moist earth there in the +vicinity of the town-gate, in hopes of its thriving and bearing fruit. +Whosoever has no arms or hands left, stretches both out for an alms. +Those to whom Heaven has entrusted the beggars’ talent, disease, above +all paralysis, the beggars’ <i>vapeurs</i>—trades with his talent, and the +body appertaining to it, levying contributions with it on the whole and +the sound. People who might stand as frontispieces to works on surgery +and medicine, quite as appropriately as at city gates, take up their +position near the latter and announce what they lack, which is, first +and foremost, other people’s cash. There are plenty of legs, noses, and +arms in Kuhschnappel, but a great many more people. There is one most +extraordinary fellow—(to be admired at a distance, though impossible +to be equalled—looked upon with envy, though indeed only by such +blotting-paper souls as can never see supreme excellence without +longing to possess it); there’s only half of him there, because the +other half’s in his grave already, everything you could call legs +having been shot clean away; and these shots have placed him in a +position at once to arrogate and assume to himself the primacy and +generalship-in-chief of the cripples, and be drawn about on a triumphal +car as a kind of demigod, whose soul, in place of a corporeal garment, +has on merely a sort of cape and short doublet. “A soldier,” said +Siebenkæs, “who is still afflicted with one leg, and who on that ground +expostulates with fate, inquiring of her, ‘Why am <i>I</i> not shot to +pieces like that cripple, so that I might make as much in the day as he +does?’ seems to forget that on the other side of the question there are +thousands of other warriors besides himself who haven’t even <i>one</i> +wooden leg (let alone more), but are totally unprovided with even +<i>that</i> fire- and begging-certificate; moreover, that however many of +his limbs he might have been relieved of by bullets, he might still +keep on asking, ‘Why not more?’” +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs was merry over the poor because they are merry over +themselves; and he never would kick up a politico-economical row about +their occasionally tippling and guzzling a little too much,—when, for +instance, a whole lazarette-wagon, or ambulance-load of them, halting +at some shepherd’s hut, they get down, and go in, and their plasters, +their martyrs’ crowns, their spiked girdles and hair-shirts come off, +leaving nothing but a brisk human being who has left off sighing just +for a minute; or—since what everybody works for is, not merely to +live, but to live a little better now and then—when the beggar too has +something a little better than his everyday fare, and when the cripple +pulls the goddess of joy into his boarded dancing-barn to dance with +him as his partner, and her hot mask falls off in the waltz (as for +<i>our</i> ball-rooms, it never falls off in them). +</p> + +<p> +About 11 o’clock, the devil, as I have half hinted already, dropped a +handful of blue-bottle flies into Firmian’s wedding soup—to wit, Herr +Rosa von Meyern, who graciously intimated his aristocratic intention of +coming to call that afternoon, “because there was such a good view of +the market-place.” People of impecunious gentility, who can’t issue +orders in any houses but their own, construct <i>in</i> their own, with much +ease, loopholes whence they can fire upon the enemy who makes his +attack from—within. The advocate had a piece of rudeness towards the +Venner to put into either scale of his balance of justice, so as to +determine which was the least of the two. The one was, to let him be +told he might stay where he was; the other, to let him in, and then +behave just as though the noodle were up in the moon. Siebenkæs chose +the latter as the smaller. +</p> + +<p> +Women, good souls, have always to carry and hold up the Jacob’s +ladder by which the male sex mount into the blue æther and into the +evening-red; this call of the Venner came as an extra freight loaded on +to Lenette’s two burden-poles of arms. The laving of all moveable +property, and the aspersion of all immoveable, recommenced. Meyern, the +false lover of the poor child-murderess, Lenette detested with all her +heart; at the same time, all her polishing machinery was at once set +agoing on the room, indeed, I think women dress themselves more and +with greater pains for their lady-enemies than for their lady-friends. +</p> + +<p> +The advocate went up and down, all behung with long chains of +ratiocination, like a ghost, and would fain have succeeded in imbuing +her with the idea that she shouldn’t give herself the slightest bother +of any kind about the nincompoop. “It was no good,” she said, “what +would he think of me?” It was not until having eliminated from the room +as a piece of crudity his old ink-bottle, into which he had only that +minute put ink-powder to dissolve and make ink for the ‘Selection from +the Devil’s Papers,’ she was about to lay hands on that holy ark, his +writing-table—that the head of the house ramped up—on his hind legs, +pointing with his fore paw to the line of demarcation. +</p> + +<p> +Rosa appeared! Nobody who had just a little soft place in his heart +could really have cursed this youngster, or beaten him into a jelly; +one rather got to feel a kind of a liking for him, between his pranks. +He had white hair on his head and on his chin, and was soft all over; +and had stuff like milk instead of blood in his veins, like the +insects, just as poisonous plants have generally white milky juice. He +was of a very forgiving nature, especially towards women, and often +shed more tears himself in an evening at the theatre than he had caused +many whom he had ruined to let fall. His heart was really not made of +stone, or lapis infernalis, and if he prayed for a certain time, he +grew pious during the process and sought out the most time-honoured of +religious formularies to give in his adhesion to them then and there. +Thunder was to him a watchman’s rattle, arousing him from the sleep of +sin. He loved to take the needy by the hand, especially if the hand was +pretty. All things considered, he may perhaps get to heaven sooner or +later; for, like many debtors in the upper circles of society, he +doesn’t pay his play-debts, and he also has in his heart an inborn +duel-prohibition against shooting and hacking. As yet he is not a man +of his word; and if he were poorer, he would steal without a moment’s +hesitation. Like a lap-dog, he lies down wagging his tail at the feet +of people of any importance, but tugs women by the skirts, or shows his +teeth and snarls at them. +</p> + +<p> +Pliant water-weeds of this sort fall away from the very slightest +satiric touch, and you can’t manage to hit them with one, richly as +they deserve it, because its effect is only proportionate to the +resistance it meets with. Siebenkæs would have been better pleased had +Von Meyern only been a little rougher and coarser, for it is just these +yielding, pitiful, sapless, powerless sort of creatures that filch away +good fortune, hard cash, feminine honour, good appointments and fair +names, and are exactly like the ratsbane or arsenic, which, when it is +good and pure, must be quite white, shining and transparent. +</p> + +<p> +Rosa appeared, I have said, but oh! lovely to behold beyond expression! +His handkerchief was a great Molucca of perfume; his two side locks +were two small ones. On his waistcoat he had a complete animal kingdom +painted (as the fashion of the day was), or Zimmermann’s Zoological +Atlas. His little breeches and his little coat, and every thing +about him salted the women of the house into Lottish salt-pillars, +merely in passing them by on his way upstairs, I must, say, though, +that what dazzle me personally, are the rings which emboss six of his +fingers,—there were profile portraits, landscapes, stones, even +beetle-wing covers all employed in this gold-shoeing of his fingers. +</p> + +<p> +We may quite properly apply to the human hand the expression “it was +shod with rings like a horse’s hoof,” it has been long applied to the +horse’s hoof itself, and Daubenton has proved, by dissections, that the +latter contains all the different parts of the human hand. The use of +these hand or finger manacles is quite proper and permissible; indeed +rings are indispensable to the fingers of those who ought by rights to +have them in their noses. According to the received opinion, these +metal spavins, or excrescences of the fingers, were only invented to +make pretty hands ugly, as a kind of chain and nose-rings to keep +vanity in check; so that fists which are ugly by nature can easily +dispense with these disfigurements. I should like to know whether there +is anything in another idea of mine bearing on this subject. It is +this. Pascal used to wear a great iron ring with sharp spines on it +round his naked body, that he might always be ready to punish himself +for any vain thought which might occur to him by giving this ring a +slight pressure; now is it not perhaps the case that these smaller and +prettier rings in a similar way chastise any vain thoughts which may +occur, by slightly, but frequently hurting? They <i>seem</i> at least to be +worn with some such object, for it is exactly the people who suffer +most from vanity who wear the greatest quantities of them, and move +about their beringed hands the most. +</p> + +<p> +Unwished-for visits often pass off better than others; on this occasion +everyone got on pretty comfortably. Siebenkæs of course was in his own +house—and behaved himself accordingly. He and the Venner looked out of +the window at the people in the market-place. Lenette, in accordance +with her upbringing, and the manners and customs of the middle classes +of small towns, didn’t venture to be otherwise than silent, or at the +most to take an exceedingly subordinate, obligato, accompanying part in +the concert of a conversation between men; she fetched and carried in +and out, and, in fact, sat most of the time down stairs with the other +women. It was in vain that the courteous, gallant Rosa Everard, tried +upon her his wonted wizard spells to root women to a given spot. To her +husband he complained that there was little real refinement in +Kuhschnappel, and not one single amateur theatre where one could act, +as there was in Ulm. He had to order his new books and latest fashions +from abroad. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs in return expressed to him merely his enjoyment over +the—beggars in the market-place. He made him notice the little boys +blowing red wooden trumpets, loud enough to burst the drum of the ear, +if not to overthrow the walls of Jericho. But he added, with proper +thoughtfulness, that he shouldn’t omit to notice those other poor +devils who were collecting the waste bits of split wood in their caps +for fuel. He asked him if, like other members of the chamber, he +disapproved of lotteries and lotto, and whether he thought it was very +bad for the Kuhschnappel common people’s morals that they should be +crowding about an old cask turned upside down, with an index fixed to +the bottom of it which revolved round a dial formed of gingerbread and +nuts, and where the shareholders, for a small stake, carried off from +the banker of the establishment, a greedy old harridan of a woman, a +nut or a ginger cake. Siebenkæs took pleasure in the little, because in +his eyes it was a satirical, caricaturing diminishing mirror of +everything in the shape of burgherly pomposity. The Venner saw no +entertainment whatever in double-meaning allusions of the kind; but +indeed the advocate never dreamt of amusing anybody but himself with +them. “I may surely speak out whatever I like to myself,” he once said; +“what is it to me if people choose to listen behind my back, or before +my face either?” +</p> + +<p> +At length he went down among the people in the market-place, not +without the full concurrence of the Venner, who expected at last to be +able to have some rational conversation with the wife. Now that Firmian +was gone, Everard begun to feel in his element, swimming in his own +native pike-pond as it were. As an introductory move he constructed for +Lenette a model of her native town; he knew a good many streets and +people in Augspurg, and had often ridden through the Fuggery, and it +seemed only yesterday, he said, that he saw her there working at a +lady’s hat, beside a nice old lady, her mother he should think. He took +her right hand in his (in an incidental manner), she allowing him to do +so out of gratefulness for calling up such pleasant memories; he +pressed it—then suddenly let it go to see if she mightn’t just have +returned the pressure the least bit in the world, in the confusion of +fingers as it were—or should try to <i>recover</i> the lost pressure. But +he might as well have pressed Götz von Berlichingen’s iron hand with +his thievish thumb as her warm one. He next came upon the subject of +her millinery work, and talked about cap and bonnet fashions like a man +who knew what he was talking about; whereas when Siebenkæs mixed +himself up with these questions, he displayed no real knowledge of the +subject at all. He promised her two consignments, of patterns from Ulm, +and of customers from Kuhschnappel. “I know several ladies who <i>must</i> +do what I ask them,” he said, and showed her the list of his +engagements for the coming winter balls in his pocket-book; “I shan’t +dance with them if they don’t give you an order.” “I hope it won’t come +to that,” said Lenette (with many meanings). Finally, he was obliged to +ask her to let him see her at work for a little, his object here being +to weaken the enemy by effecting a diversion of her forces—her eyes +being occupied with her needle, she could only have her ears at liberty +to observe him with. She blushed as she took two bodkins and stuck one +of them into the round red little pincushion of—her mouth; this was +more than he could really allow, it was so very dangerous—it formed a +hedge against himself—and she might swallow either the stiletto in +question, or at all events some of the poisonous verdigris off it. So +he drew this lethal weapon with his own hand out of its sheath in her +lips, scratching the cherry mouth a little, or not at all—as he loudly +lamented—in the process, however. A venner of the right sort considers +himself liable in a case of this kind for the fees and expenses +consequent upon the accident; Everard, in his liberality, took +out his English patent pomade, smeared some on to her left forefinger, +and applied the salve to the invisible wound with the finger as a +spatula—in doing which he was obliged to take hold of her whole hand +as the <i>handle</i> of the spatula, and frequently squeeze it +unconsciously. He stuck the unfortunate stiletto itself into his shirt +front, giving her his own breastpin instead, and exposing his own +tender white breast to—the cold. I particularly beg persons who have +had experience in this description of service to give their opinion +with firm impartiality on my hero’s conduct, and, sitting in court +martial on him, to point out such of his movements and dispositions as +they may consider to have been ill-advised. +</p> + +<p> +Now that she was wounded, poor thing, he wouldn’t let her go on +working, but only show him her finished productions. He ordered a copy +of one of them for Madame von Blaise. He begged her to put it on and +let him see it on her—and he set it himself just as Madame von Blaise +would wear it. By heaven! it was better even than he had thought; he +swore it would suit Madame von Blaise quite as well, as she was just +the same height as Lenette. This was all stuff and nonsense, really the +one was taller by quite half a nose than the other. Lenette said so +herself, she had seen Madame von Blaise at church. Rosa stuck to his +own opinion, and swore by his soul and salvation (for in cases of the +kind he was given to profane language), and by the sacrament, that +he had measured himself with her a hundred times, and that she was +half-an-inch taller than himself. “By heaven!” he said, suddenly +jumping up, “of course I carry her measure about with me, like her +tailor; all that need be done is that <i>you</i> and <i>I</i> measure ourselves +together.” +</p> + +<p> +I shall not here withhold from little girls a golden rule of war +made by myself, “Don’t argue long with a man, whatever it may be +about—warmth is always warmth, even if it only be warmth of +argument—one forgets one’s self, and ultimately takes to proving by +syllogistic figures, and this is just what the enemy wants—he converts +these figures into poetical figures—ultimately even into plastic +figures.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette, a little giddy with the rapid whirl of events, good naturedly +stood up to serve as recruit measure for her recruit Rosa; he leant his +back to hers. “This won’t do,” he said, “I can’t see,” and unlocked his +fingers which had been intertwined together, backwards, over the region +of her heart. He turned quickly round, stood before her, and embraced +her gently, so as to determine, by comparing the levels of their eyes, +whether their brows were an exact height or not. His were glaring quite +an inch higher up than hers; he clasped her closely and said, turning +red, “you see you were right; but my mistake was that I added your +beauty to your height,” and in this proximity he pressed his mouth, red +as sealing-wax, upon her lips, very founts and sources of truth as they +were. +</p> + +<p> +She was ashamed, annoyed and embarrassed, angry, and ready to cry, but +had not the courage to let her indignation break out upon a gentleman +of quality. She didn’t speak another word then. He set her and himself +at the window, and said he would read her some songs, of rather a +different kind, he hoped, to those which were being hawked down +in the street. For he was one of the greatest poets in Kuhschnappel, +although as yet it was not so much that his verses had made him known, +as that he had made his verses known. His poems, like so many others +nowadays, were like the muses themselves, children of memory. Every +old Frankish town has at least its one fashionable fop, a person +who <i>fait les honneurs</i>; and every town, however old, prosaic, +imperial-judicature-endowed, possesses its genius, its poet, and +sentimentalist; often both these offices are filled by the same +individual—as was the case in Kuhschnappel. The greater and likewise +the lesser house of assembly looked upon Rosa as a mighty genius, +smitten with the genius-epidemic-fever. This disease is something like +elephantiasis, of which Troil in his travels in Iceland gives such an +accurate description in twenty-four letters, and the principal features +of which are that the patient is exactly like an elephant as to hair, +cracks, colour, and lumps of the skin, but has not the <i>power</i> of the +elephant, and lives in a <i>cold</i> climate. +</p> + +<p> +Everard took a touching elegy out of one of his pockets, the left one, +in which (I mean in the elegy) a noble gentleman, lovesick, sang +himself to death; and he told her he should like to read it to her, if +his feelings would let him get through it without breaking down. +However, the poem shortly drew more than one tear and emotion from its +owner, and he, to his honour, was constrained to furnish a fresh proof +of the fact that however manly and cold he and poets of his stamp can +be to the heaviest sorrows of humanity, they really cannot quite +contain themselves at the woes of love, but are compelled to weep at +them. Meanwhile Rosa, who, like swindlers at play, always kept one eye +upon a reflecting surface of some sort—water, window panes, or +polished steel for instance, so as to catch a passing glimpse of the +female countenance from time to time—saw by means of a little mirror +in one of the rings of his left hand, in which hand he was holding the +elegy, just a trace or two in Lenette’s eyes of the tragic dew left +there by his poem. So he pulled out of his second pocket a ballad (it +is, no doubt, printed long ago) in which an innocent child murderess, +with a tearful adieu to her lover, throws herself upon a sword. This +ballad (very unlike his other poetical children) had real poetic merit, +for luckily (for the poem at least) he was a lover of that kind +himself, so that he could speak <i>from</i> the heart <i>to</i> the heart. It is +not easy to portray the emotion and the melting pitying tears on +Lenette’s face; all her heart rose to her tear-dimmed eyes. +</p> + +<p> +It was an experience utterly new to her to be thus agitated by a +combination of truth and fiction. +</p> + +<p> +The Venner threw the ballad into the fire, and himself into Lenette’s +arms, and cried— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! you sympathising, noble, holy creature!” +</p> + +<p> +I cannot paint the amazement with which, completely unprepared for and +incomprehensive of this transition from crying to kissing, she shoved +him away. This made little impression on him; he was on his high +horse and said he must have some souvenir of this “sacred entrancing +moment”—only a little lock of her hair. Her humble station, his +high-flown language, and the fact that she was perfectly unable to form +the slightest idea what use her hair would be to him, even supposing +she gave enough to stuff a pillow—all this put into her head the +foolish idea that he wanted it to perform some magical rite with, such +as putting her under a love spell, or something of the sort. +</p> + +<p> +He might have stabbed himself there and then before her, hewn himself +in pieces, impaled himself alive, she wouldn’t have interfered; she +might indeed have shed her <i>blood</i> to save him, but not a single <i>hair</i> +of her head. +</p> + +<p> +He had still one resource <i>in petto</i>—he had really never met with such +a case as this before; he lifted up his hand and vowed that he would +get Herr von Blaise to recognise her husband as his nephew, and pay +over his inheritance—and that with the greatest ease, because he would +threaten to jilt his niece unless he did it—if she would just take the +scissors and cut off a <i>little</i> hair memorial, no bigger even than the +fourth part of a moustache. +</p> + +<p> +She knew nothing about the business of the inheritance, and he was +consequently obliged, to the great detriment of his enthusiastic state, +to give a prosaic, detailed account of the <i>species facti</i> of the whole +of that law suit. By great good fortune he had still in his pocket the +number of the ‘Gazette’ in which the inheritance chamber’s inquiry as +to the advocate’s existence appeared in print, and he was able to put +it into her hands. And now this plundered wife began to cry bitterly, +not for the loss of the money, but because her husband had told her +nothing about it all this time, and still more because she couldn’t +quite make out what her own name really was, or whether she was married +to a Siebenkæs or to a Leibgeber. Her tears flowed faster and faster, +and in her passion of grief she would have let the deceiver before her +have all the pretty hair on her head, had not an accidental +circumstance burst the whole chain of events, just as he was kneeling +and imploring her for one little lock. +</p> + +<p> +But we must first look after her husband a little, and see how he is +getting on, and whither he bends his steps. At first among the market +stalls; for the many-throated roaring, and the Olla Podrida of cheap +pleasures, and the displayed pattern cards of all the rags out of, and +upon, which we human clothes moths construct our covering cases and our +abodes—all these caused his mind to sink deep into a sea of +humoristic-melancholy reflections concerning this mosaic picture of a +life of ours, made up as it is of so many little bits, many-tinted +moments, motes, atoms, drops, dust, vapours. He laughed, and listened, +with an emotion incomprehensible by many of my readers, to a ballad +singer, bawling, with his rhapsodist’s staff in his right hand pointed +at a big, staring picture of a horrible murder, and his left full of +smaller, printed pictures, for sale, in which the misdeed and the +perpetrator of it were displayed to the German public in no brighter +colours than those of poetry. Siebenkæs bought two copies, and put them +in his pocket, to read in the evening. +</p> + +<p> +This tragic murder picture evoked in the background of his fancy that +of the poor girl he had defended, and the gallows, on to which fell +those burning tears which had flowed from his wounded heart—that heart +which nobody on earth, save one, understood—when last it had been +lacerated. He left the noisy market-place, and sought all-peaceful +nature, and that isolatorium, destined alike for friendship and for +guilt, the gallows. When we pass from the stormy uproar of a fair into +the still expanse of wide creation, entering into the dim aisles of +nature’s hushed cathedral, the strange sudden calm, is to the soul as +the caressing touch of some beloved hand. +</p> + +<p> +With a sad heart he climbed up to the well-known spot, whose ugly name +I shall omit, and from these ruins he gazed around upon creation, as if +he were the last of living beings. Neither in the blue sky, nor upon +the wide earth, was there voice or sound; nothing but one forlorn +cricket, chirping in monosyllables, among the bare furrows, where +the harvest had been cleared away. The troops of birds flocking +together with discordant cries flew to the green nets spread upon the +ground—and not to meet the green spring far away. Above the meadows, +where all the flowers were withered and dead, above the fields, where +the corn ears waved no more, floated dim phantom forms, all pale and +wan, faint pictures of the past. Over the grand eternal woods and hills +a biting mist was draped in clinging folds, as if all nature, trembling +into dust, must vanish in its wreaths. But one bright thought pierced +these dark fogs of nature and the soul, turning them to a white +gleaming mist, a dew all glittering with rainbow colours, and gently +lighting upon flowers. He turned his face to the north-east, to the +hills which lay between him and his other heart, and up from behind +them rose, like an early moon in harvest, a pale image of his friend. +The spring, when he should go to him and see him once more, was at work +already preparing for him a fair broad pathway thither, all rich with +grass and flowers. Ah! how we play with the world about us, so quickly +dressing it all with the webs which our own spirits spin. +</p> + +<p> +The cloudless sky seemed sinking closer to the dusky earth, bright with +a softer blue. And though a whole long winter lay between, the music of +the coming spring already came, faint and distant, to his ear; it was +there in the evening chime of the cattle bells down in the meadows, in +the birds’ wild wood notes in the groves, and in the free streams +flowing fast away amid the flowery tapestries that were yet to be. +</p> + +<p> +A palpitating chrysalis was hanging near him still in her +half-shrivelled caterpillar’s case, sleeping away the time till the +flower cups all should open; phantasy, that eye of the soul, saw beyond +and over the sheaves of autumn the glories of a night in June; every +autumn-tinted tree seemed blooming once again; their bright coloured +crests, like magnified tulips, painted the autumn mist with rainbow +dyes; light breezes of early May seemed chasing each other through the +fresh, fluttering leaves; they breathed upon our friend, and buoyed him +up, and rose with him on high, and held him up above the harvest and +above the hills, till he could see beyond these hills and lands—and +lo! the springs of all his life to come, lying as yet enfolded in the +bud, lay spread before his sight like gardens side by side—and there, +in every spring time, stood his friend. +</p> + +<p> +He left the place, but wandered a long while about the meadows, +where at this time of year there was no need to hunt carefully for +footpaths—chiefly that his eyes might not betray where his thoughts +had been to all the market people who were to be met. It was of little +use—for in certain moods the torn and wounded heart, like injured +trees, bleeds on and on, and at the slightest touch. +</p> + +<p> +He shunned eye-witnesses, such as Rosa above all, for this reason, that +he was (I am sorry to have to say it) in just one of those moods when, +whether from modesty or from vividness of feeling, he was most disposed +to mask his emotion under the semblance of temper. At last a weapon of +victory came to his hand, the thought that he had to apologize and make +amends to his guest for so long and so uncourteous an absence. +</p> + +<p> +When he got home what a strange state of matters! The old guest +gone—another there in his place—and near the latter his wife in +tears. When he came into the room, Lenette went to one of the windows, +and a fresh torrent of tears fell down. “Madame Siebenkæs,” said the +Schulrath, continuing his address to her, and keeping hold of her hand, +“submit yourself to the will of God, I beseech you; nothing has +happened but what can be put to rights without difficulty. I am willing +to concede you a sorrow of the heart—but it must be a restrained and a +subdued one.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette looked out of the window, not at her husband. +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath related, in the first place, all that I have already +given my account of (Firmian, listening to him and looking at him, took +the glowing hand of Lenette, whose face was still averted), and then +continued— +</p> + +<p> +“When I came in, merciful Heavens, there was his lordship on his knees +before Madame Siebenkæs, with carnal tears, and—I am constrained to +have the gravest suspicions—a design upon her precious honour! +However, I raised him up, without the least ceremony, and I said to +him, with the boldness of St. Paul himself—for which I am ready to +answer before God and man—‘Your Lordship, are these the doctrines +which I inculcated into your Lordship when I was your private tutor; is +it Christian conduct to go down upon your knees in such a manner? Fie, +for shame, Herr von Meyern. Fie, for shame, Herr von Meyern!’” +</p> + +<p> +Here the Schulrath got into a terrible heat again, and strode up and +down the room with his hands in the pockets of his plush coat. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian said, “It’s a simple matter to set up a scarecrow and plant a +hedge to keep off a hare like <i>him</i>; but what ails <i>you</i>, love,” he +said, “and what are you crying so bitterly about?” +</p> + +<p> +She cried more bitterly than ever; when the Schulrath planted his hands +on his sides, and said to her in much wrath, “Very well, Madame +Siebenkæs, this is the way of it, is it? This is all the impression my +good counsel and comforting words have made upon your mind, is it? I +never should have believed it of you! +</p> + +<p> +“It was all for nothing then (as I am constrained to conclude) that, +when I had the honour of bringing you here from Augspurg in my +carriage, I described to you with all the eloquence at my command, the +blessedness of the married state, before you had had an opportunity of +learning it by experience; it seems I might just as well have spoken to +the winds of heaven. Can it really be the case that all that I said to +you in the carriage simply went in at one ear and out at the other? +when I told you how happy a wife was in and through her husband, how +she often could hardly help crying for joy at possessing him—how these +two had but one heart and one flesh, and shared everything between +them, joy and sorrow, every morsel of food, every wish and desire, ay +and the very smallest secrets. Well, well, Madame Siebenkæs, I see the +Schulrath may keep his breath to cool his porridge.” +</p> + +<p> +Upon this she twice wiped and dried her eyes hurriedly, constrained +herself to look at him very kindly indeed, and with a forced appearance +of being quite pleased again, and said with a deep sigh, but softly and +not in a tone of pain, “Oh dear me!” +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath touched her hand as it hung down with his finger tips in +a priestly manner, and said— +</p> + +<p> +“But may the Lord be your physician and helper in all your necessities” +(he could hardly say more, for his tears were coming), “Amen,—which +is, being interpreted, ‘Yea, verily, so mote it be.’” Here he embraced +and kissed the husband, and this with much warmth, saying, “Send for +me, if your wife can obtain no consolation—and may God give you both +strength. O, by the by—the very thing I came here about—the review of +the Easter programme must be ready by Wednesday—and I am in your debt +for the eight lines or more you did about that piece of rubbish the +other day, which you gave such a capital dressing to.” +</p> + +<p> +When he had gone, however, Lenette didn’t seem so thoroughly consoled +as might have been expected: she leant at the window sunk in deep, +hopeless, amazement and reflection. It was in vain that Firmian pointed +out that of course he wasn’t going to change his and her present name +any more, and that her honour, marriage, and love didn’t depend upon a +wretched name or so up or down, but upon himself and his heart. She +restrained her tears, but she continued to be troubled and silent the +whole of the evening. +</p> + +<p> +Now let no one call our good Firmian over jealous or suspicious when, +having just got well rid of one wretched sacrilegious robber of +marriage honour, the Venner, the idea of a volcanic eruption which +might throw stones and ashes all over a great tract of his life +suddenly occurs to him; what if his friend Stiefel should be really (as +it almost seems) falling in love with his wife, in all innocence, +himself. His whole behaviour from the very beginning—his attentions on +the wedding-day, his constant visits, and even his exasperation with +the Venner that very day, and his warm feeling and sympathy on the +occasion altogether, all these were the separate parts of a pretty +coherent whole, and seemed to indicate a deep and growing affection, +thoroughly honourable, no doubt, and unperceived by himself. Whether or +not a spark of it had jumped off into Lenette’s heart, and was +smouldering there, it was impossible as yet to determine; but true and +good as he knew his wife and his friend to be, his hopes and his fears +could not but be pretty equally balanced. +</p> + +<p> +Dear hero! Do continue to be one! Destiny, as I see more and more +clearly as time goes on, seems to have made up her mind gradually to +join the separate pieces of a drill machine together with which to +pierce through the diamond of thy stoicism; or else by slow degrees to +build and fashion English scraping and singeing machines (made out of +poverty, household worries, law suits, and jealousy) to scrape and +singe away from thee every rough and ill-placed fibre, as if you were a +web of finest English cloth. If this should be so, do but come out of +the mill as splendid a piece of English stuff as was ever brought to +the Leipzig cloth and book fair, and you will be glorious indeed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch04"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">A MATRIMONIAL PARTIE À LA GUERRE—LETTER TO THAT HAIR COLLECTOR, +THE VENNER—SELF-DECEPTIONS—ADAM’S MARRIAGE SERMON—SHADOWING +AND OVER-SHADOWING. +</p> + +<p> +There is nothing which I observe and note down with more scrupulous and +copious accuracy than two equinoctial periods, the matrimonial equinox +when, after the honeymoon, the sun enters the constellation Libra (or +the balance), and the meteorologic vernal equinox; because, by +observing the weather which prevails at these two periods, I am enabled +to prognosticate with surprising accuracy the nature of that which will +characterise the succeeding season. I consider the first storm of the +spring to be always the most important, and similarly, the first +matrimonial storm; the others all come from the same quarter. +</p> + +<p> +When the Schulrath was gone, the poor’s advocate took his sulky +house-goddess into his arms, and plied her with every conceivable +method of proof; with proofs derived from immemorial hearsay, +partial proofs, evidential proof, proof on oath, and by logical +deduction—every kind of proof wherewith one can harden one’s own +heart, or soften another’s. +</p> + +<p> +But the whole of the evidence he adduced was useless. He might just as +well have been embracing the cold hard angel at the baptismal font in +the principal church, his own angel remained quite as cold and silent. +Furboots had been the tourniquet which stopped the hemorrhage of +Lenette’s open, streaming artery; but his departure had taken the +German tinder stopping from her eyes and now they streamed unstanched. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs went often to the window, and up and down in the room, that +she might not see that he was following her example, and that her +sorrow, little reasonable as it was, infected him by sympathy. We can +more easily bear, and forgive pain of our own causing than of +another’s. All the following day there was an unendurable silence in +the house. This was the very first of the beds of the matrimonial +nursery-garden in which a seed of the apple of discord had been +planted, and as yet not the faintest rustle of its sap was audible. It +is not in the first domestic squabble, not till the fourth, tenth, +ten-thousandth, that a woman can keep perfect silence with her tongue, +yet make a tremendous noise with her body, and turn every chair which +she shoves about, and every reel of cotton which she lets fall, into a +language-machine and fountain of speech, and play her <i>instrumental</i> +music all the louder, because her <i>vocal</i> parts are counting their +rests. <span class="sc">Lenette Wendeline</span> moved everything and said everything, as +softly as if her liege lord had the gout and was lying with cramped +foot pressed in agony against the trembling bottom board of his bed. +</p> + +<p> +When the third day of this came on, he was vexed and annoyed—and he +had reason. I beg to say that, for my own part, I should be quite +prepared to quarrel with my own wife, if I had one—ay, and to do it +with a will—and that to some purpose, and to bandy words with her, as +well as letters (though I should prefer the former). But there’s one +thing which would kill me outright, and that would be her keeping up a +long, dreary, tearful sulking, a thing which, like the sirocco wind, +ends by blowing out all a man’s lights, thoughts, and joys, and at +length his life itself. Just as we all of us, rather <i>like</i> a violent +thunderstorm in summer, and think it refreshing rather than otherwise +in itself—and yet consider it a cursed nuisance on the whole, because +it’s sure to be followed by some days of dreary wet weather. Siebenkæs +was all the more vexed on this occasion, because he was a man who +scarcely ever was vexed. As other jurists have reckoned themselves +among men exempt from torture, so Siebenkæs had long ago fortified +<i>himself</i> against grief and care, those torture racks of the soul (by +the help of Epictetus), as effectually as he had the infanticide +against bodily torture. +</p> + +<p> +The Jews hold that when Messiah comes, hell will be joined on to +paradise, so as to make a bigger dancing saloon. And all the year long, +Siebenkæs occupied himself in building and adding on his torture +chambers and schools of suffering to the entertainment halls of his +bagatelle, so as to have more room to perform his ballets. +</p> + +<p> +He often said a medal should be struck for any citizen who should be +three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight minutes and +fifty-five seconds, without either growling or snarling. +</p> + +<p> +He wouldn’t have got that medal himself in the year 1785. On the third +day, the Saturday, he was so wild at his wife’s speechlessness, that he +was wilder still with that kill-joy of an Everard. For, of course, that +minnesinger, might come in again at any moment, bringing in his company +the goddess of discord (who, as directrix and ambassadress, performs +such important poetical functions in Voltaire’s Henriade), and +introducing her into the homely “Volkslied” of an advocate, by way of a +<i>dea ex machina</i> to unloose the matrimonial knot, and tie a fresh one +with the Venner. Siebenkæs accordingly wrote him the following +academic-controversial document. +</p> + +<p> +“May it please your Lordship, +</p> + +<p> +“I take the liberty to lay before your Lordship in this little memorial +my humble petition, +</p> + +<p> +“That you will be pleased to stay at home, and spare me the honour of +your visits. +</p> + +<p> +“Should your Lordship find it necessary to become possessed of a +certain quantity of my wife’s hair—the undersigned hereby undertakes +to cut and deliver the same himself. In the event of your Lordship’s +being minded to exercise a <i>jus compascui</i>, or right of free common and +pasturage in my premises, and appearing therein in person, I shall +embrace with much pleasure the opportunity then afforded me of plucking +as many of your Lordship’s own hairs as may be requisite to constitute +a souvenir out of your Lordship’s head, by the roots, like monthly +radishes, with my own hands. While I was in Nürnberg, I used often to +go and dine in the neighbouring villages (against the will of the +authorities) with a fine old <span class="sc">Prugel Knecht</span>,<a name="div2Ref_27" href="#div2_27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> <i>i. e</i>. with a private +tutor, who had towzed out and excerpted from the heads of three little +slips of nobility, while he was giving them their lessons, enough silky +hair to make him a handsome mouse-coloured bag-wig, which the man most +probably wears to this day. His motive in thus applying himself to the +production of silk, or rather, his reason for divesting these little +heads of their exterior foliage, was, that his own beams might the more +effectually ripen the fruit within, as, for similar reasons, it is +usual to remove leaves from the vines in August. +</p> + +<p class="right">“I have the honour to remain, &c.” +</p> + +<p> +I shall be very sorry if I cannot manage to get the reader to +understand that the advocate wrote this biting letter without the +slightest bitterness of feeling. He had read the brilliant satirical +writings of the three merry wise men of London, Butler, Swift, and +Sterne—those three bodies of the satirical giant, Geryon, or three +furies (Parcæ) of the foolish—to such an extent that, as their +disciple and follower, he never thought whether it was a biting letter +or not. In his admiration of the artistic beauties of his composition, +he lost sight of its meaning; and indeed, if a stinging speech were +made to himself, he would think nothing of the length of its prickles +in comparison with its form and shape. I need merely instance his +‘Selection from the Devil’s Papers;’ the satirical poison bubbles +and venomous prickles so frequent in that work came from his pen and +ink—<i>i. e</i>. his head only, not from his heart. +</p> + +<p> +I take the opportunity of begging the reader always to infuse the very +soul of gentleness and kindness into every word and tone he utters +(because it is our words more than our deeds which make people angry), +and, more particularly still, into every page he writes. For, truly, +even if your correspondents have forgiven you an epistolary <i>pereat</i> +long ago, yet the old leaven of ill-will ferments anew, if the +sorrel-leaf of a letter containing it chances to come to hand again. We +may, of course, on the other hand, reckon upon a similar immortality +for a piece of epistolary kindness. Truly, though a long, cutting +December wind had made my heart stiff and immoveable to everything in +the shape of kindly feeling for one who, once on a time, used to write +me absolute Epistles of St. John, tender pastorals of letters, what +would it matter, if I should but chance to turn up these old letters in +my letter-treasury of bundles and packets of letters? +</p> + +<p> +The sight of the beloved handwriting, the welcome seal, the kind, +endearing words, and the pieces of paper where so many a pleasure found +space to sport and play, would cast the sunshine of the old affection +upon the frozen heart once more; it would reopen at the memory of the +dear old time, as some flower that has closed reopens when a sunbeam +lights upon it, and its only thought—ay, were it but the day before +yesterday that it had conceived itself mortally offended—would be, +“Ah! I was too hard upon him (or her) after all.” Many of the saints in +the first century used to drive devils out of the possessed, in a +somewhat similar way, merely by means of letters. +</p> + +<p> +Furboots came, as if he had been sent for, on the Saturday evening, +like a Jewish Sabbath. I have often seen a guest serve as cement +or hefting powder to two better halves in a state of fracture, +because shame and necessity compelled them to speak and behave +kindly to each other, at all events while the guest was there. +Every husband should be provided with two or three visitors +of this sort, to come in when he’s suffering from an attack of +wife-possessed-too-long-with-the-devil-of-dumbness; as long as the +people are there, at all events, she must speak, and take the iron +thief-apple of silence—which grows on the same stalk as the apple of +discord—out of her mouth. +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath stood up before Lenette Wendeline as if she were one of +his school girls, and asked her if she had borne this first cross of +her married life patiently, and like a worthy sister in suffering of +the patriarch Job. She drooped her big eyes, wound a thread the length +of a finger into a white snowball, and breathed deeper. Her husband +answered for her: “I was her brother in affliction, and bore the +cross-bar of the burden—I without a murmur, she without a murmur. In +the twelfth century, the heap of ashes on which Job endured his +sufferings used still to be shown. Our two chairs are our heaps of +ashes; there they are still to be seen!” +</p> + +<p> +“Good woman!” said Stiefel, in the softest pianissimo of his pedal +reed-stop of a masculine voice, and laid his snow-white hand on the +soft, raven hair upon her forehead. Siebenkæs heard a multiplying +sympathetic echo of these words in his heart, and laid his arm on +Lenette’s shoulders, who was blushing with pleasure at the honour +conferred upon her by this kindness of the man in office. Her husband +softly pressed her left side to his right, and said:— +</p> + +<p> +“She is good, indeed; she is gentle, and quiet, and patient, and only +too industrious. If the whole tag, rag and bobtail of Hell’s army, +in the shape of the Venner, had only not advanced upon our little +summer-house of happiness, to knock its roof off, we should have lived +happy in it for many a day, Mr. Stiefel, far into the winter of our +lives. For my Lenette is good, and <i>too</i> good for me and for many +another man.” Here Stiefel, in his emotion, surrounded that hand of +hers which had the skein of thread in it, at the seat of the pulse with +his fine fingers—the empty hand being in her husband’s possession—and +the Wound Water of our pain, the great drops of which trickled from her +drooped eyes down her cheeks, where her imprisoned hands could not wipe +them away, made the two male hearts very tender. And besides, her +husband could never praise any one long without his eyes overflowing. +He went on, faster, “Yes, she might have been very comfortable and +well-off with me, but that my mother’s money is kept back from me in +this terrible way. But, even for all that, I should have made her happy +without the money, and she me—we never had a word, never a single +unhappy moment—now had we, Lenette? nothing but peace and love, till +the Venner came. He has taken a good deal from <i>us</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath raised his clenched fist in wrath, and exclaimed, sawing +the air with it, “You child of hell! you robber-captain and filibuster! +You silken Catiline and mischief-maker! Does it ever strike you that +you’ll have to answer for this and your other pranks one day? Mr. +Siebenkæs, this, at all events, I <i>do</i> expect of you, that if ever he +comes here again asking for hair, you will turn him out by the hair of +his own head, or hit this fur-maggot (as you call him yourself) across +the shoulders with a boot-jack, and squeeze his hand with a pair of +pincers—in fact, the long and the short of it is, <i>I will not</i> have +him come here any more.” +</p> + +<p> +And here Siebenkæs, to cool down his own emotions and other people’s, +mentioned the fact of his having already taken steps in the matter, and +served the necessary letter of inhibition upon the Venner. Stiefel +clucked his tongue in a joyful manner, and nodded his head approvingly. +He considered any person high in office to be a vicegerent of Christ on +earth, a count to be a demigod, and an emperor as a whole one;—but a +single one of the deadly sins committed by any of them all would at +once cost them the whole of his deferential good will,—and a slip in +Latin grammar, though committed by a head crowned with gold, he would +at once have done battle with in a whole Latin Easter programme. Men of +“the world have straight bodies and crooked souls; scholars often have +neither the one nor the other. The last of Lenette’s clouds cleared +away when she heard that a paper escarpment and <i>cheval de frise</i> +against the Venner had been constructed at her door. “Then he will +trouble me no more! Thanks be to Heaven! He goes about lying and +deceiving everyone he comes across.”<a name="div2Ref_28" href="#div2_28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +“We don’t employ these words, Madame Siebenkæs, if we care to speak +grammatically,” said Stiefel; “irregular verbs such as ‘<i>kriechen</i>, +<i>trügen</i>, <i>lügen</i>,’ though they are <i>verba anomala</i>, and as such +have ‘<i>kroch</i>, <i>log</i>, <i>trog</i>,’ and so on in the imperfect tense, are +still always inflected quite regularly in the present by the best German +grammarians—although the poets permit themselves a poetical license in +such cases, as, I am sorry to say, they do in most others—and +therefore we say, if we care to be grammatically correct, ‘<i>lügt</i>, +<i>trügt</i>, <i>kriecht</i>,’ &c., at the present day, that is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t find fault with my dear Augspurger’s Lutheran inflections,” said +Siebenkæs; “there’s something touching to me about these irregular +verbs of hers; they are the Schmalkaldian article of the Augspurg +confession.” Here she drew her husband’s ear softly down to her lips +and said, “What would you like me to get for supper? Tell the gentleman +that you know I mean no offence, whatever words I use. And I wish you +would ask his reverence, Firmian dear, when I’m out of the room, +whether our marriage is really all right according to the Bible.” He +asked this question on the spot. Stiefel answered it deliberately as +follows:—“We have only to look at the case of Leah, who was conducted +to Jacob’s tent under the pseudonym of Rachel on her marriage night, +and whose marriage the Bible holds to be perfectly valid. Is it names +or bodies that exchange rings? And can a name fulfil the marriage vow?” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette answered these questions, and spoke her thanks for this +consistorial decision by a bashful glance of restored content and a +beaming face upturned towards him. She went to the kitchen, but kept +constantly coming back and snuffing the candle, which was on the table +at which the two gentlemen sat talking; and probably nobody, except the +advocate and I, will consider this to be any indication of a more than +ordinary liking for Stiefel. The latter always took the snuffers from +her, saying “it was <i>his</i> duty.” Siebenkæs clearly perceived that both +the apples of his eyes revolved, satellite-fashion, round his own +planet, Lenette; but he did not grudge the Latin knight his little +glimpse of an age of chivalry thus sweetened by a Dulcinea; like most +men, he could far sooner pardon the rival lover than the unfaithful +fair; women, on the other hand, hate the rival more than the unfaithful +lover. Moreover, he knew perfectly that Stiefel had not the least idea +himself whom or what he cared for or sighed for, and that he was a far +better hand at reviewing schoolmen and authors than himself. For +instance, his own anger he called professional zeal; his pride, the +dignity due to his office; his passions, sins of weakness; and on this +occasion love appeared to him disguised as mere philanthropy. The arch +of Lenette’s troth was firmly finished off in the keystone of religion, +and the Venner’s assault upon it had not shaken this sacred masonry in +the slightest degree. +</p> + +<p> +At this juncture the postman stumped up stairs with a new constellation +which he set in their serene family sky, namely, the following letter +from Leibgeber. +</p> + +<p class="right">“Bayreuth, 21 Sept., 1785. +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:6em; text-indent:-6em">“My dear Brother, Cousin, and Uncle,<br/> +Father and Son! +</p> + +<p> +“For the two auricles and the two ventricles of thy heart constitute my +entire genealogical tree:—as Adam, when he went for a walk, carried +about with him the whole of his blood relations that were to be, and +his long line of descendants—which is not wholly unreeled and wound up +even at this day—till he became a father, and his wife bare a child. I +wish to goodness I had been the first Adam! Siebenkæs, I do adjure you, +let me, let me, follow up this idea which has struck me and taken hold +of me with such power; let me not write a word in this letter that does +not add a touch to the three-quarter-length portrait which I shall draw +of myself as the first father of mankind! +</p> + +<p> +“Men of learning are much mistaken who suppose my reason for wishing I +were Adam to be, that Puffendorf and many other writers very properly +award me the whole of this earth as a kind of European colony in the +India of the universe, as my <i>patrimonium Petri</i>, <i>Pauli</i>, <i>Judæ</i> +and +the rest of the Apostles; inasmuch as I, being the sole Adam and man, +and consequently the first and last of universal monarchs (although as +yet without any subjects), might of course lay claim to the entire +earth. It might occur to the pope, indeed (he being holy father, though +not our first father), to make a similar claim, or rather it did occur +to him some centuries ago, when he constituted himself the guardian and +the heir of all the countries of the earth, and indeed made bold to set +two other crowns on the top of his earthly one, a crown of heaven and a +crown of hell. +</p> + +<p> +“How small a thing it is that I desire! All that I wish I had been the +old Adam (in fact, the oldest Adam) for, is merely that I might have +strolled up and down with Eve among the espaliers of Eden on our +marriage night, in our aprons and beasts’ skins, and delivered an +address in Hebrew to the mother of all living. +</p> + +<p> +“Before commencing my address I beg to observe that, while I was yet +unfallen, it fortunately occurred to me to note down the more important +heads of my universal knowledge. For I had, in my condition of +innocence, a perfect and intuitive knowledge of all the sciences, of +history, both universal and literary, the various criminal and other +codes of law, all the dead languages as well as the living, and was a +kind of live Pindus and Pegasus, a portable Lodge of Light and learned +society, a pocket university, and miniature golden <i>Siècle de Louis +XIV</i>. Considering what my mental powers were at that juncture it is a +miracle (and what’s more, a very lucky job) that in my leisure moments +I put down the cream of my universal knowledge on paper, because when I +subsequently fell, and became simple and ignorant, I had these +excerpts, or <i>Catalogues raisonnés</i>, of my former wisdom by me, so that +I could refer to them. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Virgin!’ (it was thus that the sermon delivered outside Paradise +commenced) ‘it is true we are the first of parents, and are minded to +originate all the subsequent parents; though all that you think about +is sticking your spoon into a forbidden apple. However, I, being a man +and protoplast, reflect and ponder, and as we walk to and fro, I shall +undertake the office of preacher of the sermon on this, the occasion of +our entering into the bonds of wedlock (not having as yet, +unfortunately, begotten anybody else to do it), and, in a brief wedding +exhortation, direct your attention to the doubts affecting and the +reasons deciding, the protoplasts, or the first parents and first of +wedded couples (that is to say, you and me), in the act of reflecting +and considering, and how— +</p> + +<p> +“‘In the first place, they consider the reasons why they should not +people the earth, but emigrate this very day, the one into the old +world, the other into the new; and +</p> + +<p> +“‘In the second place, the reasons why they should do nothing of the +kind, but marry. +</p> + +<p> +“‘After which a short elench, or <i>usus epanorthoticus</i>, will be +adduced, and will conclude the lecture and the night.’ +</p> + +<p class="center"> +IN THE FIRST PLACE +</p> + +<p class="noindent">“‘My dearly beloved! +</p> + +<p> +“‘Here, in my sheepskin, as I appear before you, grave, thoughtful, and +wise, it is nevertheless the fact that I am full to the very brim +of—not so much follies as <i>fools</i>, with a good many wise men stuck in +here and there between them by way of parentheses. I am of short +stature, it is true, and the ocean<a name="div2Ref_29" href="#div2_29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> came a good deal above my +ancles, and besprinkled my new beasts’ skin; and yet, as I walk up and +down here, I am girt about with a seed cloth, containing the seeds of +all nations, and carrying the repertory of the whole human race, an +entire world in miniature and <i>orbis pictus</i>, round my middle like a +pedlar’s stock in trade. For <span class="sc">Bonnet</span>, who is in me among the rest, will +sit down at his desk (when he comes out), and prove that they are all +one inside the other, like a nest of boxes or a set of parentheses, +that the father contains the son, that the grandfather contains them +both, the great-grandfather consequently the grandfather and all the +contents of him, the great-great-grandfather the great-grandfather and +the contents of his contents and all his episodes, all sitting waiting +one inside the other. Are there not then here embodied in thy +bridegroom—this is a point, dear bride, which cannot be made <i>too</i> +intelligible to you—all religious sects, excepting the Preadamites, +but including the Adamites,<a name="div2Ref_30" href="#div2_30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> and all giants, the great Christopher +himself among them every individual of every nation of all the +earth—all the shiploads of negroes destined for America, and the +packets marked with red containing the soldiers promised by England to +Anspach and Bayreuth? Eve, am I not, as I stand here before you, a +whole Jews’-quarter—a Louvre of all the crowned heads of the +earth—since I can bring them all into existence if I please, and if I +am not induced by this first head of my discourse to refrain from doing +so? You will admire me, and yet laugh at me at the same time if you but +look at me well, lay your hand on my shoulder, and say to yourself: +“Now, in this man and protoplast are contained all mankind, all the +learned faculties, all schools of philosophy, and of sewing and +spinning, cheek by jowl in peace and harmony, the highest and noblest +royal families and princely houses (though not yet sorted out from +among the common ship’s company), all free imperial orders of +knighthood, packed higgledy-piggledy with their vassals, cottiers, +and tenants, it is true—monasteries and nunneries next door to each +other—barracks and members of Parliament, to say nothing of cathedral +chapters, with all their provosts, deans, priors, sub-priors, and +canons! What a man! What an Anak!” you will add. You are right, dear, I +am indeed—the very nest dollar of the human coin-cabinet, the +universal court of assembly of all judicatures, with all the members of +all assemblies, not one out of its place, the walking <i>corpus juris</i> of +all civil, canon, criminal, feudal, and municipal law. Haven’t I +Meusel’s ‘Learned Germany’ and Jöcher’s ‘Scholastic Lexicon’ within me +all complete, and Jöcher and Meusel themselves, to say nothing of their +supplementary volumes? I wish I could just let you see Cain—who, if +head second of this discourse should determine me, would be our first +offshoot and sucker, our Prince of Wales, Calabria, Asturias and the +Brazils. You would see, if he were transparent—as I believe him to +be—how he contains all the rest, one inside the other, like beer +glasses—all œcumenical councils, inquisitions, and propaganda, and +the devil and his grandmother. But, loveliest, thou didst not write +down any of thy <i>scientia media</i> before thy fall, as I did, and +consequently thou starest into the future as blind as a bat. I, +however, who see into it quite clearly, am enabled by my chrestomathy +to perceive that, where other men beget perhaps some ten fools, I shall +beget whole millions of tens, and units into the bargain, seeing that +the Bohemians, Parisians, Viennese, Leipzigers, Bayreuthers, Hofians, +Dublinese, Kuhschnappelers (and their wives and daughters over and +above) have all got to come into existence through me, and that in +every million of them there will always be at least five hundred who +neither have, nor will listen to, reason. Duenna, as yet you know +little of the human race, but two in fact, for the serpent is not one; +but I know what sort of race I am going to produce, and that in opening +my <i>limbus infantum</i>, I open at the same time a Bedlam. By heaven, I +weep and lament when I merely peep in between the leaves of the +centuries in their long course, and see nothing there but gouts of +gore, and a congeries of idiots—when I think of the trouble and pain +to be undergone before a century shall learn to write a legible hand, a +hand even as good as a minister’s or an elephant’s trunk—before poor +humanity gets through its dame’s school, and private tutors, and French +governesses, so as to be fit for Latin grammar schools, public schools, +Jesuit seminaries, and next for fencing classes, dancing classes, +dogmatic and clinical courses. By old Harry, I feel hot. Nobody will +think of you as the brood-hen of the coming flock of starlings, as the +spawning codfish in whom Leuwenhack will count 9½ millions of eggs; not +you, my little Eve, but your husband, will get all the blame, who +should have known better, and rather begotten nothing than such a +rabble of thieves and robbers, crowned emperors on the Roman throne, +and vicegerents on the Roman chair, the former of whom will call +themselves after Antoninus and Cæsar, the latter after Christus and +Petrus, and among whom there are men whose thrones shall be Lüneburg +torture chairs for the human race, if not the converse of a Place de +Grève, where the masses shall be put to death, and the single +individual feted and amused.<a name="div2Ref_31" href="#div2_31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> And I shall be taken to task on +account of Borgia, Pizarro, St. Dominic, and Potemkin. Even supposing I +should manage to evade being blamed for black exceptions such as these, +I should be obliged to admit that my descendants really cannot get +through the space of half-an-hour without either thinking or doing +something foolish, that the war of giants, waged in them by their +passions, is never broken by a peace, seldom even by a truce; that the +greatest of all man’s faults is that he has such a number of little +ones; that his conscience serves for scarcely anything but <i>hating his +neighbours and being morbidly sensitive to their transgressions</i>; that +he never leaves off evil ways till he is on his deathbed; that, he +learns and loves the language of virtue, but is at enmity with the +virtuous—just as the English employ French language teachers, though +they detest the French themselves. Eve, Eve, we shall have little to +congratulate ourselves upon if we marry; Adam means in the original +“red earth,” and truly my cheeks will consist entirely thereof, and +will blush scarlet at the mere thought of the indescribable and +unparalleled conceit and vanity of our great-grandchildren, increasing +as the centuries go on. Nobody will tweak <i>himself</i> by the nose—unless +perhaps when he is shaving. Critics will set themselves up above +authors, authors above critics—Heimlicher von Blaise will give his +hand to be kissed by orphans; ladies theirs to be kissed by all and +sundry; mighty ones the embroidered hems of their garments. Eve, I had +only got as far on with my prophetic extracts from the world’s history +as the sixth century, when you bit the apple under the tree, and I, +like a fool, did as you did, and everything slipped out of my head: God +only knows what sort of a set the fools and foolesses of the subsequent +centuries may turn out to be. Virgin, wilt thou now put into action thy +<i>Sternocleidomastoideum</i>, as Sömmering styles the muscle which nods the +head, and so express your “yes” when I put to you the question, “Wilt +thou have the marriage-preacher to thy wedded husband?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘You will no doubt reply, let us first hear the second head of the +discourse, in which the subject is considered from another point of +view. And indeed, dearly beloved, we had almost forgotten that we must +proceed to the +</p> + +<h3>SECOND PLACE,</h3> + +<p class="noindent">and consider the reasons which may persuade first parents to become +such, and to marry, and serve Destiny in the capacity of sewing and +spinning machines of linseed, hemp, flax, and tow, to be wound by her +in endless networks and coils around the earthly sphere. My strongest +reason, and, I trust, yours also, is the thought of the Day of +Judgment. For, in the event of our becoming the <i>entrepreneurs</i> of the +human race, I shall see all my descendants, when they ascend from the +calcined earth like vapour, at the last day, into the nearest planet, +and fall into order for the last review; and among this harvest of +children and grandchildren, I shall hit upon a few sensible people with +whom one may be able to exchange a rational word or two—men whose +whole lives were passed, as well as lost, amid thunder and lightning +(as according to the Romans those whom the gods loved were killed by +lightning), and who never closed their eyes or their ears, however wild +the storm. I see the four heathen evangelists among them too, Socrates, +Cato, Epictetus, and Antoninus, men who went through the world, using +their voices like fire-engine pipes, two hundred feet long, to save +people from being burnt out of house and home by the fire of their own +passions, sluicing them all over with pure, cold, Alp-water. And there +can be no doubt after all, that I may really be the arch-papa, and you +the arch-mamma, of some very great and celebrated people, that’s to +say, if we choose. I tell you, Eve, that I have it here in black and +white among my excerpts and collectanea that I shall be the forefather, +ancestor, and Bethlehem of an Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, +Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Leibnitz, people, take them for all in all, who +are as able thinkers as their protoplast himself, if not abler. Eve, +thou active and important member of the fruit-bearing jointstock +company, or productive class of the state (consisting of thyself and +this marriage-preacher), I assure you I expect to pass a few hours of +exquisite enjoyment when on that neighbouring star I survey in a +cursory manner that classic concourse newly risen from the dead, and at +length kneel down, and cry, “Good morning, my children! Such of you as +are Jews were wont to utter an ejaculatory prayer when ye met a wise +man; but what such utterance would suffice for me, now that I behold +all the wise and all the faculties at once, all of them my own blood +relations too, who amid the wolfish hunger of their desires have +stedfastly refrained from forbidden apples, pears, and pine apples, +and, deep as their thirst for wisdom might be, committed no +orchard-robbery on the tree of knowledge, though their first parents +seized upon the forbidden fruit, although they had never known what +hunger was, and upon the tree of knowledge, although they possessed all +knowledge, except knowledge of the serpent nature.” And then I shall +arise from the ground, pass into the angelic crowd, fall on the bosom +of some distinguished descendant, and, throwing my arms around him, +say, “Thou, true, good, contented-minded, gentle son! If I could just +have shown <i>thee</i> only, sitting in thy brood-cell, to my Eve, the +queen-bee of this great swarm here present, at the time when I was +delivering the second head of my marriage sermon, I’m sure she would +have listened to reason, and given a favourable answer.’” +</p> + +<p> +“And thou, Siebenkæs, art that same, true, good son, and thou restest +ever on the warm, heaving breast of +</p> + +<p class="right">“Thy Friend. +</p> + +<p class="center">“<i>Postscript and Clausula Salutaris</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“Please to forgive me this merry private ball and witches’ dance upon +cheap and nasty letter-paper, notwithstanding that you are +unfortunately an infinitesimal fractional part of the German race, and +as such, can’t be expected either to stand, or to understand, such a +dance of ideas. This is why I never print anything for the unwieldy +German intellect; entire sheets which I have spawned full of playful +idea-fishes of this sort I consign at once to regions where such +productions do not usually arrive till they attain the evening of their +days, having previously exercised the right of transit through the +booksellers’ shops. I was eight days in Hof, and am at present living a +retired life at Bayreuth; in both of these towns I have made faces, +that is, other people’s profiles; but most of the heads which sat or +stood to my scissors opined that all was not quite right in mine. Tell +me the real truth of the matter; it’s not altogether a matter of +indifference to me, because if I should turn out not to be quite ‘all +there,’ I should be incapable of devising my property by will, or of +exercising various civil functions. +</p> + +<p> +“In conclusion, I send a thousand kind remembrances and kisses to your +dear, good Lenette, and my compliments to Herr Schulrath Stiefel, and +will you please ask him if he is any relation to Magister Stiefel, the +rector of Holzdorf and Lochau (in Wittemberg), who prophesied +(incorrectly, as I consider) that the end of the world would take place +on the 1st January, 1533, at 8 o’clock in the morning, and lived to die +in his own bed after all. I also send, for you and the ‘Advertiser,’ a +couple of programmes of Professor Lang’s of this place, relative to the +General Superintendent of Bayreuth, and one of Dr. Frank’s of Pavia. +There is a very charming young lady, exceedingly clever and +intellectual, living here at the Sun Hotel (she is in the front rooms, +and I in the back). She has been very much pleased with me and my face, +I am happy to tell you, seeing how exactly you and I are alike, the +only difference between us being my lame foot. So that the things I +pride myself upon in ladies’ society are my likeness to you and my +weaknesses. Unless I have been misinformed, this lady is a poor niece +of your old uncle’s with the broken glass wig, and is being brought up +at his expense, and destined for a marriage with some Kuhschnappeler of +the upper ten thousand. Perhaps she may soon be forwarded to you, +entered in the way-bill as bridegroom’s effects. +</p> + +<p> +“The above is my oldest news, but my newest news, namely your own self, +I shall not expect to arrive here at Bayreuth till I and the spring get +back to it together (for the day after to-morrow I am off to meet it in +Italy), and we, I and the spring, together beautify the world to such a +degree that you will certainly enjoy a happy time of it in Bayreuth, +the houses and the hills of that place being so particularly charming. +And so, fare thee somewhat well.” +</p> + +<p> +They all felt certain that the Kuhschnappeler of rank for whom the +Heimlicher’s niece was being brought up could be none other than the +Venner Rosa, whose little burnt-down stump of a heart—what was left of +it after being hitherto made use of to set fire to the bosoms of female +humanity in general (as the lamp in a smoking-room serves to kindle the +pipes of the collective frequenters thereof)—would be the marriage +torch to light her to her new home. +</p> + +<p> +As there were three heavens in this letter—one for each of the +party—kind remembrances for Lenette, the programmes for Peltzstiefel, +the letter itself for Siebenkæs—I shouldn’t have been astonished if +the terzetto of them had danced for joy. The Schulrath, intoxicated +with delight—for the glad blood rose to his sober head—opened the +papers sent him upon the square patterned supper-cloth (which was laid +already), and hungrily began to devour his three printed “relishes +before supper,” and literary petits soupers, upon the tin plate without +even saying grace, until an invitation to stay and have some supper +reminded him that he must be off. But before leaving, he petitioned +that, by way of fee for having acted as middleman and court of +arbitration between them, or as an alkali to promote the blending of +his oil with her water—he might have a new profile of Lenette. The old +one cut out by Leibgeber (which the letter brought to his +recollection), and which, as we may remember, Leibgeber let him have, +happened to have been put into the pocket of his dressing-gown and sent +to the wash with it (being of much the same colour, moreover). “It +shall be put on the stocks to-night,” said Siebenkæs. +</p> + +<p> +When the Schulrath was going, as he could see that the ring upon +Lenette’s finger didn’t squeeze it so uncomfortably as it had done (and +gave <i>himself</i> credit for having been the means of filing it smoother +and padding it softer), he shook her hand with much warmth, and said— +</p> + +<p> +“I shall always be delighted to come whenever there’s the slightest +thing the matter with you two charming people.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette answered, “Oh yes, do come very often.” +</p> + +<p> +And Siebenkæs added, “The oftener the better.” +</p> + +<p> +And yet, when he had gone, the ring seemed to be not quite so +comfortable again, and medical students who may be working at +psychology may be a little surprised that during supper the advocate +said very little to his wife, and she very little to him. The reason +was that he had Leibgeber’s letter lying by his plate in the place +where the bread normally is, and the image of his beloved friend shone +bright before his mental vision from Bayreuth all athwart the far misty +darkness between—their first happy meeting to come floated magically +before him. Hope shot down a pure clearing ray into the dark mephitic +cave where he was panting and toiling now—and the coming spring stood +like some cathedral tower all hung with lamps lofty and bright in the +distance, beaming through the dark night sky. +</p> + +<p> +At length he “came to himself,” <i>i. e</i>. to his wife; the strong image +of Leibgeber had buoyed him up from the sharp stones which strewed the +present; the dear old friend, who had clipped out the bride’s profile +up in the choir on the wedding-day, and been with them in the early +weeks of their honeymoon, seemed to fling a chain of flower-wreaths +about him and draw him closer to the silent form by his side. “Well +darling, and how are you getting on?” he said, awaking from his reverie +and taking her hand, now that all was peace again between them. She +had, however, the feminine peculiarity or foible, habit at all events, +of being much quicker to show that she was vexed than that her anger +was over; of, at all events, being slow to show the latter; and of +commencing a reconsideration of all the matters in dispute at the very +moment that amends have been made and accepted, and pardon begged and +granted. There are very few married women indeed who will put their +hand into their husbands’, and say “There, I’m good again,” without a +very considerable hesitation and delay; unmarried women are much more +ready to do it. Wendeline <i>did</i> hold hers out, but did it too coldly, +and drew it away again in a great hurry, to take up the table-cloth, +which she asked him to help her to smooth and fold up. He did this +smilingly—she gravely giving her whole attention to the process of +folding the long white parallelogram into exact squares—and at length, +when the last and thickest square was arrived at, he held it fast +there—she pulled, trying to look very serious—he looked at her very +fondly and tenderly—she couldn’t help smiling at this and then he took +the tablecloth from her, pressed it and himself with it to her heart, +and said, in her arms, “Little thief! how can you be so naughty to your +old ragamuffin of a Siebenkæs, or whatever his name may be?” And now +the rainbow of a brighter future appeared shining above the fast ebbing +flood which had risen as high as their hearts so lately—But, my +dears, rainbows now-a-days very often mean just the reverse of what the +first was said to signify. +</p> + +<p> +The prize he awarded to his queen of the rose-feast of the heart was to +ask her to let him take a profile of her pretty face, that Peltzstiefel +might find a joy and a present waiting for him on the morrow. I think I +shall just trace an outline of his outline-tracing for people of taste +in this place; but I must stipulate that nobody is to expect a pen +to be a painter’s brush—or a painter’s brush to be an engraver’s +style—or an engraver’s style a flower anther, generating generation +upon generation of lilies and roses. +</p> + +<p> +The advocate borrowed a drawing-board, viz. the façade of a new +pigeon-house, from Fecht the cobbler. Lenette’s shoulder fitted into +the oval portal of it as a clasp-knife does into its handle; a sheet of +white paper was tacked on to the board—her pretty, soft head was +pressed on the stiff paper—he applied, with much care and self +restraint, his pencil at the upper part of the brow, difficult as it +was to catch the shadow in such immediate proximity to the reality—and +went slowly down the beautiful, flowery declivity all roses and lilies. +But little or nothing came of it; the <i>back</i> part of the head was +pretty good. His eyes would keep turning away from his work to the +sitter, so that he drew as vilely as a box-painter. +</p> + +<p> +“Wendeline, your head isn’t still a moment,” he said. And indeed her +face, an well as her brain-fibres, shook by reason of the heightened +beat of her pulse and the quickening of her breathing; while, on the +other hand, his pencil stumbled when it came to the delicate <i>basso +relievo</i> of her little nose, fell into the cleft at her lips, and +stranded on the shoal of her chin. He kissed those lips which he +couldn’t draw, and which she always had either too much open or too +tightly closed, and brought a shaving-glass and said, “See, haven’t you +got more faces than Janus, or any Indian god? The Schulrath will think +you were making faces, and I copying them. Look, here’s where you +moved, and I sprung after you like a chamois; the effect of the jump +is, that the upper part of the face sticks out before the lower like a +half mask. Just think how the Schulrath will stare in the morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Try once more, dear; I’ll do just as you tell me; I should like it to +be very nice,” Lenette said, blushing; and stiffened her neck, and +steadied her soft cheek against the drawing-board. And as her husband +gently glided his drawing ovipositor over her brow like a segment of +some white hemisphere—instead of breathing, he found she was <i>holding</i> +her breath this time till she shook again, and till the colour came to +her face. +</p> + +<p> +And here jealousy, like some exploding fire-ship, sent hard fragments +of the wreck of his shattered happiness crashing on a sudden against +his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” (he thought) “can it be that she does really love him?” (<i>i. e.</i> +the Schulrath). +</p> + +<p> +His pencil stood still in the obtuse angle between her nose and her +chin as if under a spell; he heard her let go her pent-up breath; his +pencil made black zigzags at the edge of the paper, and as he stopped +at the closed lips, which nothing warmer than his own, and her morning +prayers, had ever touched, and thought “Must <i>this</i> come upon me too? +must <i>this</i> joy be taken from me like all the rest? And am I drawing up +my bill of divorce and Uriah-letter here with my own very hands?” He +could do no more at it. He took the drawing-board quickly from +her shoulder—fell upon her closed lips—kissed away the pent-up +sigh—pressed the life out of his jealousy between his heart and hers, +and said— +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t do it till to-morrow, Lenette! Don’t be vexed, darling! Tell +me, are you quite as you used to be in Augspurg? Don’t you understand +me? Have you not the slightest idea what I am driving at?” +</p> + +<p> +She answered quite innocently, “Now you will be annoyed, Firmian, I +know, but I really have <i>not</i> the slightest idea.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the Goddess of Peace took from the God of Sleep his poppy garland, +and twined it into her own olive wreath and led the wedded pair, +garlanded and reconciled, hand in hand into the glittering, gleaming, +icefields of the land of dreams—the magic shadowy background of the +noisy jarring, shifting day—our camera obscura full of moving +miniature pictures of a world all dwarfed, in which man, like the +Creator, dwells alone with his own creations. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +<h3><a name="div1Ref_endpref"></a>END OF THE PREFACE AND OF THE FIRST BOOK.</h3> + +<p> +The reader will remember that, at the beginning of the preface, I +stated that I succeeded in putting the old merchant into a sweet sleep, +and in providing his daughter with a gladsome feast of tabernacles, in +the shape of the young unopened buds of this, my little cottage-garden +here. But the foul fiend knows how to breeze up a sudden rain squall, +and let it splattering down upon all our loveliest fireworks. I was +only performing a duty in converting myself into a small, pocket +circulating library for a poor lonely thing of a girl, whose father +gave her no chance of a word or two of rational conversation except +with her parrot, and with the family lawyer aforesaid. +</p> + +<p> +The cage of the former was placed near her inkstand and waste-book; and +he acquired from his mistress as much in the shape of German-Italian +as a bookkeeper finds necessary for carrying on his foreign +correspondence. And a parrot being always incited to talkativeness by a +looking-glass in his cage, he and his language-mistress were enabled to +look at themselves in it together. The latter (the family lawyer) I +myself was. But the Captain—for fear of seductive princess-kidnappers +and pirates such as me, and because her mother was dead, and because +she was useful in the business—would let her speak to no man +whomsoever, except in the presence of a third party (viz., himself). So +that it was very seldom any man came to the house, except me; whereas, +a father generally decoys whole museums of insects into his house by +means of a blooming daughter, just as a cherry-tree in blossom near a +window fills a room with wasps and bees. It wasn’t exactly everybody +who, when he wanted to speak a rational word with her (<i>i. e</i>. one her +father shouldn’t hear), could manage to draw the flute stop of his +organ, and then play away for an hour to this Argus till he should +close his hundred green eyes, so that two blue ones might be looked +into. I <i>did</i> manage it, indeed; but the world shall hear what sort of +a psalm of thanksgiving and vote of thanks I was treated to for my +pains. +</p> + +<p> +The old man—who had grown suspicious on account of the length of time +I had remained the evening before—had this evening only <i>pretended</i> to +be asleep, that he might see what I was going to be at. The rapidity +with which he went asleep (the reader no doubt remembers it at the +beginning of the book) ought to have struck me more than it did. I +ought to have reckoned on a contrary state of matters myself, and been +ready with more prefaces in addition to this present one, to serve as +sleeping powders. +</p> + +<p> +The rascally eavesdropper lay in wait till I had made my report on the +two Flower-pieces and the four first chapters of this book. At the end +of the fourth he bounced up as a mole-trap does when one walks on it, +and addressed me from behind with the following harangue of +congratulation—“Has the devil got you by the coat-tails? You must come +here from Berlin, must you, and stuff my daughter’s head with all sorts +of atheistical, nonsensical, romantic balderdash and nonsense, till +she’ll be of no more use in a shop than——” +</p> + +<p> +“Just listen to one word, Herr Pigtail!” said I quite quietly, taking +him into the next room, where there was neither fire nor light; “just +listen to one single, <i>half</i>-word!” +</p> + +<p> +I put my hands upon his shoulders, and said, “Herr Pigtail—for in +Charles the Great’s time every officer was so styled, because in those +days the soldiers wore tails, as the women do now—Herr Pigtail, I’m +not going to have a tussle with you to-night, when the old year’s going +out and the new year’s coming in. I assure you solemnly that I am the +son of the ——,<a name="div2Ref_32" href="#div2_32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> and that I shall never see you more, though you +shall have all the Vienna letters just the same. But I implore you, for +God’s sake, to allow your daughter to read. Now-a-days every tradesman +reads—one of whom will be her husband—and every tradesman’s wife. Yet +for all this reading, there’s still plenty of spinning and cooking +going on; there are shirts in plenty, and fat people in abundance. And +as for <i>corrupting</i> her—why! that’s just what a man who reads will +find it most difficult to accomplish in the case of a woman who reads, +and most easy in the case of one who hardly knows her A B C. Let me +entreat you, Captain.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you would but just mind your own affairs! What’s the girl to +<i>you</i>?” was his reply. It was a true harbour of refuge for me that, on +neither of these two evenings, the Christmas Eve or the New Year’s, had +I, in the enthusiasm of narration, so much as touched anything of the +daughter’s but about a groschen’s worth of hair (and that not her own), +which got among my fingers somehow or other, I hardly know how. +</p> + +<p> +It would have been little to have seized her hands, in the fervour of +my biographical enthusiasm it would have been nothing at all; but, as I +have said, I hadn’t done it. I had said to myself, “Enjoy a pretty face +as you would a picture, and a female voice as you would a +nightingale’s, and don’t touch the picture or throttle the bird. What! +must every tulip be out up for salad, and all altar-cloths made into +camisoles?” +</p> + +<p> +Of all truths, the one which we bring ourselves to credit last of all +is that there are certain men whom no amount of truth will convince. +That Herr Pigtail was one of these presently occurred to me, not so +soon as it ought to have done, and I determined that the only sermon I +should preach, to him would be of the jocular and middle-age-Easter +kind.<a name="div2Ref_33" href="#div2_33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> “Not so loud, Herr Pigtail, or mademoiselle will hear every +syllable; you have pinned her, poor butterfly, into your letter book; +but at the great day of judgment I shall accuse you of not having given +her my works to read. I do wish you had only gone on pretending to be +asleep long enough to allow me to tell her the other books of the +history of Kuhschnappel, where Siebenkæs’s troubles occur, and his +death, and his marriage. But, mademoiselle, I shall tell my publisher +in Berlin to send you the remaining books of the story the moment they +are in print, fresh out of the press, still all damp, like a morning +newspaper. And now, adieu, Herr Pigtail; may Heaven grant you a new +heart with the new year, and your dear daughter a second heart inside +her own.” +</p> + +<p> +The elemental conflict of his and my dissimilar components raged louder +and louder: but I say no more about it—every additional word would +have the appearance of an act of vindictiveness. This, however, I may +at all events say: happy is every daughter who may read my works while +her father is awake (very few such daughters, however, recognise this +truth). Unhappy is every dependent of an Oehrmann, because he will be +starved, as a greyhound is, that he may be the more nimble at running +(I do not mean on the piano with his fingers), as the dancers’ children +get nothing to eat that they may spring the better! And fortunate are +all needy persons who have nothing to do with him; because Jacob +Oehrmann gives to everyone just as much moral, as he possesses +mercantile, credit, to which recruit-measure of worth he has been +habituated by his fellow-tradesmen, who measure each other with +yard-measures of metal. The only people who find favour in his sight +are those who are complete paupers, and this because they serve as +pedestals for his charity; for the alms which he distributes in the +name of the town and out of its exchequer, he looks upon as his own. +Peace be with him! At that time I had not taken a part myself in +celebrating the peace-festival of the soul which I have described in +the Fruit-piece of this book, and I had read but little of what I have +there written concerning the year of Jubilee which ought to last as +long as the Long Parliament in our hearts with respect to all our moral +debtors; for if I had I should not even have contradicted Herr Pigtail. +</p> + +<p> +I vexed him, I am sorry to say, once more by my parting speech to his +daughter (for I wished him and her my wishes both together and at once, +so that it might not appear which was for which). +</p> + +<p> +“Herr Pigtail, and mademoiselle, I bid you a long farewell. No more +shall I be able, in elysian evenings, to relate to you any of my +biographies (shorn of the digressions); and the feast days and the +holidays, as well as the eves thereof, will come and will go, but he +who has caused you such vivid emotions will come no more. May fate send +thee books instead of bookmakers, sometimes stir thy dull heart with a +poetic throb, heave thy still breast with tender sighs prophetic of the +future—bring to thy eyes some gentle tear drops, such as an andante +causes to flow, and lead thee on through the hot, toilsome summer days, +not to an after summer, but to a flowery tuneful spring. And so, good +night.” +</p> + +<p> +It goes to my heart to part with people; even were it my sworn +hereditary foe: one is going to see him no more. Pauline was anything +but my sworn hereditary foe. Out in the streets there were more +new year well-wishers going their rounds, the watchmen, who were +giving utterance to their good wishes in wind instrumental music and +miserable verse. Stiff, old-fashioned, rude verses always touch me +more—particularly in an appropriate mouth—than your sapless, new +poems, all tricked out with artificial flowers and ice-plants; poetry +altogether wretched is better than the mediocre. I decided upon going +through the town gate; my heart was filled with emotions of very +different kinds—for you see it was only eleven o’clock and the cold +night was full of stars. And it was the last night of the year, and I +didn’t want to pass from the old year to the new in sleep, though that +is how I would pass from this life to the next. I resolved to take that +flushed, throbbing heart of mine out of the streets, and to a quieter +company. +</p> + +<p> +Place a man in some waste Sahara desert stretching further than the eye +can reach, and afterwards pen him up into the narrowest of corners, he +will be struck, in both cases, by the same vivid consciousness of his +own individuality—the widest spaces and the narrowest have the same +powerful effect in quickening our perception of our own Ego and of its +relationship. There is nothing, on the whole, oftener forgotten than +that which is what forgets—namely, the forgetter’s <i>self</i>. Not only do +the mechanical employments of labour and trade always draw men out of +themselves, but the mental effort of study and investigation, also, +renders scholars and philosophers just as deaf and blind to their own +Ego, and its position with respect to other entities—deafer and +blinder even. Nothing is more difficult than to convert an object of +contemplation (which we always <i>move away</i> to a certain distance from +ourselves, and from the mind’s eye, so as to bring the latter to bear +on it properly) into an object of sensation, and to feel that the +object is the eye itself. I have often read whole books on the subject +of the Ego, and of printing, right through, until at last I saw, to my +astonishment, that the Ego and the printed letters were before—me so +to speak under my nose. +</p> + +<p> +Let the reader say truly: has he not even at this moment, while I have +been talking, been forgetting that there are letters before him, ay, +and his own Ego into the bargain? +</p> + +<p> +But out where I was, under the twinkling heavens, and on a snow-covered +height, round about which there gleamed a white, frozen plain, my Ego +burst away from its relationships (while in connection with them it was +no more than an attribute, a quality), and it became a personage—a +separate entity. And then I could look upon myself. All marked points +of time—stanzas as it were, or music phrases, of existence—new years’ +days for example, and birthdays, lift man high out of and up above the +waves which are round him; he clears the water from his eyes, and looks +about him, and says—“How the current has been carrying me along, +drowning my hearing, and blinding my sight! Those are the waves, down +there, onward, which have been bearing me along, and these, now coming +toward me, when I dip down among them, will whirl me away!” +</p> + +<p> +Without this clear, distinct consciousness of one’s Ego, there can be +no freedom, and no calm equanimity amid the crowding elbowing tumult of +the world. +</p> + +<p> +I shall go on with my story. I stood upon an iceberg, but my soul was +all aglow—the cloven moon shone brightly down, and the shadows of the +pine-trees about me lay, like dismembered limbs of the night, black +upon the lily ground of snow. Away, some distance from me, a man seemed +to be kneeling motionless on the ground. +</p> + +<p> +And now 12 o’clock struck, and 1794, year of war and tumult, fell, +with all its rivers of blood, into the ocean of eternity; the booming +after-tone of the bell seemed to say to me, “Now has Destiny, with the +twelfth stroke of her hammer, knocked down the old year to you, poor +perishing mortals, at her auction of minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +The kneeling man now stood up and went quickly away. I could long see +him and his shadow disappearing in the moonlight. +</p> + +<p> +I left my height, the boundary hill between two years, and went down to +where the man had been kneeling. I found a crucifix and a black leather +prayer-book in duodecimo, all thumbed yellow, except one leaf at the +beginning on which was the name of the owner, whose knees had worn deep +traces in the ice. I knew him well, he was a cottager whose two sons +had had to go to the war. On looking more closely, I found he had drawn +a circle in the snow, to keep off evil spirits. +</p> + +<p> +I saw it all; the simple, weak-minded creature, whose soul was darkened +by a perpetual annular eclipse, had gone there on this solemn night to +hearken to the hollow distant muttering thunder of the coming storm, +and laid his prostrate soul, as it were, upon the earth to hear the +distant march of the approaching foe. “Shallow, timid soul,” thought I, +“why should the dead that are to be come floating athwart the face of +the clear, still night—thy sleeping sons among them, memberless? Why +strive already to see the darting flames of conflagrations yet to come, +and to hear the dismal turmoil, the bitter wail, of a woe as yet +unborn? The coffins of the coming year have, as in times of pestilence, +no inscriptions yet—why should the names appear upon them? Oh! thy +Solomon’s ring has been no protection against the destroying angel who +dwells within our breasts. And that vague, ugly giant-cloud, behind +which are death and the future, will prove, on approach, to <i>be</i> death +and the future itself.” +</p> + +<p> +In hours like these we are all ready to lay our hats and swords on to +the bier—ay, and ourselves as well—our old wounds burn anew, and our +hearts, not being truly healed, a little thing breaks them again, like +arms imperfectly set. But the cruel, piercing lightning flash of some +great minute, the reflection of which stretches gleaming athwart the +whole river of our life, is necessary to us to make us blind to the +<i>ignes fatui</i> and glowworms which meet us, to guide us, every hour: and +frivolous, giddy man needs some powerful shock to counteract his +tendency to continual petty naggling. Therefore, to us little +crustaceans sticking with our suckers upon the ship of this earth, +every new year’s night is, like night in the old mythologies, a mother +of many gods in us—and in such a night there begins for us a better +normal year than that which began in 1624. And I felt as if I should +kneel, humble and penitent, on the spot where the poor childless father +had knelt. +</p> + +<p> +But now a brisker air brought to my ears a burst of gladsome music; it +came like the breath of flowers across the frozen plain, horns and +trumpets on the church tower, sending their cheering harmonies over the +sleeping earth, ushering, with glad vigorous tones, the first hour of +the new year in to a world of anxious, doubting men. And I too grew +glad and strong; I raised my glance from the white shroud of the coming +spring, and gazed at the moon; and on these spots on her face (these +spots which grow green as you approach) I saw our earthly spring +reposing upon flowers, and already moving his young wings, soon to take +his flight with other birds of passage, and, bright with glittering +plumes, and hailed by skylarks’ anthems, come and alight upon our +shores. +</p> + +<p> +The distant new year’s music flowed around me still I felt much +happier, and far more tender; I saw the <i>coming</i> sorrows in the new +born year, but they wore such lovely masks that they were more like +sorrows that are <i>past</i>, or like the music around me—just as the rain +which falls through the great caverns in the Derbyshire hills sounds in +the distance like music. +</p> + +<p> +But when I looked around me, and saw the white earth shining like a white sun, +and the silent deep blue sphere all round, like a household circle of one great +family—and as the music, like lovelier sighs, accompanied my +thoughts—as I fixed my gaze, with grateful heart, upon the starry sky +where all these thousands of stedfast witnesses of the beautiful moments +(moments faded, out of bloom, indeed, now—but the great Beneficence +spreads their <i>seed</i> for evermore)—when I thought of the men asleep +all around me, and wished that they might all be happier when they opened their +eyes in the morning—and when I thought of those awake +<small>UNDER</small> me, whose slumbering souls stood in need of such a +wish,—my heart, oppressed by the music, and by the night, grew heavy and +grew full, and the blue sky, the glittering moon, and the sparkling snow-height +all melted into one great floating shimmer. +</p> + +<p> +And in the shimmer, and amid the music, I heard voices of my friends, +and dear fellow-creatures, tenderly and anxiously wishing their new +year’s wishes. They touched my heart so deeply, that I could but barely +<i>think</i> my own— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! may you all be happy <i>all</i> the years of your lives.” +</p> + +<h3>END OF BOOK I.</h3> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_pref234"></a>PREFACE TO THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH BOOKS.</h2> + +<p> +It has often been a source of much annoyance to me that to every +preface I write I am obliged to append a book—like the endorsement on +a bill of exchange—or an appendix to letters A to Z. Many a man who +dabbles in authorship by way of amusement has his books sent to him all +ready written and complete, straight from the cradle; so that all he +has to do is to attach his gold frontlets of prefaces to their +foreheads—which is nothing but painting the <i>corona</i> about the sun. As +yet, however, not a single author has applied to me for a preamble to a +book, although for several years I have had a considerable number of +prefaces by me (all ready beforehand, and going at great bargains), in +which I extol to the best of my ability works which have not as yet +come in to being. In fact, I have now a perfect museum of these prize +medals and commemoration medals of other people’s cleverness at the +service of anyone who may stand in need of them; they are all made by +the very finest of mint-machinery, and my collection of them is +increasing day by day; so that I shall be obliged to sell it off +wholesale before very long (I don’t see what else I can do), and bring +out a book—consisting of nothing but pre-existent prefaces. +</p> + +<p> +They will still be obtainable singly, however, until the Easter fair, +and authors who make early application can have the entire fascicle of +preludes forwarded to them, so that they can pick out for themselves +whichever preface seems to them the most laudatory of a book. After the +Easter fair however, when the Book of Prefaces above mentioned comes +out (and it will be interleaved with the fair catalogue), the literary +world will only be beglorified in <i>corpore</i>, in <i>coro</i>, and I shall be +(so to speak) making a present of a patent of nobility to the republic +of letters in the lump,—as the Empress Queen did in 1775 to the whole +mercantile community of Vienna; although I have before my eyes (in the +shape of the poor reviewers who work themselves well nigh to death, +hammering and building away at the temple of fame, and at triumphal +arches) the melancholy proof that though a man were to extol the +republic of letters even in six volumes folio, he would get less for it +than Sannazaro did for belauding the republic of Venice in as many +lines—for each line in the latter case brought the poet in a matter of +a hundred five-dollar pieces. +</p> + +<p> +I propose to interstratify one of the prefaces in question in this +place by way of a specimen and experiment, making as if its celebrated +author had written it to order for this book (which is the actual +truth, moreover). There is no difficulty in my splitting myself up into +two characters, the flower painter and the preface maker. But,—as one +cannot <i>quite</i> lose sight of feelings of becoming modesty—I carefully +pick out the most miserable specimen of the lot, one in which laudation +occurs but to a very moderate extent, one which places the author of +the book attached to it upon a funeral car, rather than upon a +triumphal one, with nothing whatever to draw it along moreover; whereas +the other prefaces harness posterity to them, and the reading public +are, by <i>them</i>, yoked on to the heavenly chariot, the Elijah’s chariot, +of Immortality, in which they draw the author along. +</p> + +<p> +In conclusion, then, I have only to observe that the celebrated author +of ‘<span class="sc">Hesperus</span>’ has been kind enough to look through my Flower-pieces, +and contribute to them the following preface, which will be found well +worthy of perusal. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_prefauthor"></a>PREFACE, BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘HESPERUS.’</h2> + +<p> +The following remarks may be thrown into the form of a series of +postulates, which are, at the same time, so many similes. +</p> + +<p> +Many authors (Young is an instance) set fire to their nerve-spirit, +which, like burning spirit of another kind (brandy), tinges every +person who stands round the inkbottle where it is flaring with a sham +<span class="sc2">DEADLY</span> pallor. But, unfortunately, each looks only at the others, none +looks into the mirror. The effect of the proximity of this universal +mortality all about, upon people and authors, is that each is impressed +with a livelier sense of the exceptional nature of his own +<i>im</i>mortality; and this is remarkably comforting to us all. +</p> + +<p> +The consequence is, as it seems to me, very plain. Poets, living in +fifth, or fiftieth floors, may make poems, but not marriages; neither +may they keep, nor establish, houses. Canaries’ breeding cages have to +be more roomy than their singing cages. +</p> + +<p> +If this be so, then, what does the author’s pen do? Like a child’s, it +traces in ink the characters which nature has faintly marked in the +reader with pencil. +</p> + +<p> +The author’s strings only vibrate in unison with the reader’s octaves, +fifths, fourths, and thirds—not with his seconds or sevenths. +Unsympathetic readers do not become sympathetic ones; it is only the +cognate, or congruent, sort which rise to the author’s level or pass +beyond it. +</p> + +<p> +And with this stands or falls my fourth postulate. The iron shoe of +Pegasus is the armature of the magnet of truth, increasing its power of +attraction; yet we are hungry birds, and fly at the poet’s grapes as +though they were real ones, thinking the <i>boy</i> a painted one, when we +really ought to be frightened at <i>him</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The transition from this to the fifth postulate is a self-evident +matter. Man has such a high opinion of everything in the shape of +antiquity, that he prolongs it, and keeps it alive, and lives according +to it, though it be but the cover and the mask of the very poison which +will destroy itself. There are two proofs of this proposition which I +leave aside, of set purpose; the first is, Religion, which is all +gnawed to worm dust; the second, Freedom, which is quite as much +crumbled to powder as the other. In my capacity of a member of the +Lutheran Church, I merely glance at the subject of relics (in support +of the proposition)—relics, in the case of which, as Vasquez the +Jesuit informs us, if they chance to be entirely eaten up of worms, we +must continue to worship what remains—that is to say, the worms which +have eaten them. Wherefore, meddle not with that nest of worms, the +time in which thou livest, or it will eat thee up; a million of worms +are quite equal to one dragon. +</p> + +<p> +This must be admitted and assumed, at least if my sixth postulate is to +have any sense in it which is,—that no man is wholly indifferent to, +and unaffected by, <i>every</i> kind of truth; indeed even if it be only to +poetical <i>reflections</i> (illusions) that he swears allegiance—inasmuch +as he does even <i>that</i> he thereby does homage to truth; for in all +poetry it is but the part which is <i>true</i> which goes to the heart (or +head), just as in our passions and emotions nothing but the Moral +produces effect. A reflection which should be nothing whatever <i>but</i> a +reflection would necessarily, for that very reason, not <i>be</i> a +reflection. Every <i>semblance</i> (meaning every thing which we <i>see</i>, or +suppose we <i>see</i>) presupposes the existence of <i>light</i> somewhere, and +<i>is</i> itself light, only in an enfeebled or reflected condition. Only, +most people in our, not so much <i>enlightened</i> as <i>enlightening</i> times, +are like nocturnal insects who avoid, or are pained by, the light of +day, but, in the night, fly to every <i>nocturnal</i> light, every +phosphorescent surface. +</p> + +<p> +The graves of the best men are like those of the Moravians, level and +flat, and this earthly sphere of ours is a Westminster Abbey of such +levellings and flattenings—ah! what innumerable drops of tears as well +as blood (which are what the three grand trees of this world—the trees +of Life, of Knowledge, and Liberty—are watered with) have been shed, +but never counted. History, in painting the human race, does not follow +the example of that painter who, making a portrait of a one-eyed king, +drew only his seeing profile; what history paints is the blind side, +and it needs some grand calamity to bring great men to light—as comets +are seen during total eclipses of the sun. Not upon the battle-field +only—upon the holy ground of virtue also, and upon the classic soil of +truth—the pedestal whereon history raises on high some <i>single</i> hero +whose name rings in all men’s ears has to be composed and built +up of thousands of <i>other</i> heroes who have fought and fallen, nameless +and unknown. The noblest deeds of heroism are done within four walls, +not before the public gaze,—and as history keeps record only of the +<i>men</i> sacrificed, and, on the whole, writes only in spilt blood, +doubtless our annals are grander and more beautiful in the eyes +of the all-pervading spirit of the universe than in those of the +history-writer; the great scenes of history are estimated according to +the numbers of angels or devils on the stage, the <i>men</i> not being taken +into account. +</p> + +<p> +These are the grounds on which I rely when I assert with a good deal of +boldness that when we inhale the perfume of the full-blown blossoms of +joy with too deep and strong an inhalation, without having first given +them a good shake, we run the risk of snuffing up some tormenting +insect (before we know what we are about) through the ethmoid into the +brain;<a name="div2Ref_34" href="#div2_34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> and <i>who</i>—tell me if you can—is to get it out again? +Whereas little or nothing of a risky sort can be snuffed up out of +<i>Flower-pieces</i>, and their painted calices, since painted worms remain +where they are. +</p> + +<p> +This, then, is what <i>I</i> have to postulate by means of similes. What the +<i>public</i> postulates, or demands, is my opinion of these Flower-pieces. +The author is a promising youth of five years of age;<a name="div2Ref_35" href="#div2_35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> he and I have +been friends since childhood, and, I think, can assert that we have but +one soul between us, as Aristotle says should be the case with friends. +He gets me to read over everything he thinks of publishing, and to give +him my opinion and advice. And, as I returned these Flower-pieces to +him with the warmest (and, at the same time, sincerest) expression of +my approval, he has requested me to make my verdict somewhat more +widely known, believing as he does (rather too flatteringly perhaps) +that it may carry a certain amount of weight with it, more especially +as it is an impartial verdict, and, as such, one which can be placed in +the hands of the critics as a species of ruler wherewith to draw the +lines upon which <i>their</i> verdicts may be written. +</p> + +<p> +In this, however, he goes a little too far. All I can say is that the +work is written quite as if I had done it myself. There is no greater +amount of dynamic ornamentation in it than is usual in books, and, +happy as the author would have been to have thundered, stormed, and +poured in it, there was of course no room in a parish advocate’s +lodgings for Rhine cataracts, thunderstorms, tropical hurricanes (of +tropes) or waterspouts, and he has had to reserve his more terrific +tornadoes for a future work. I have his permission to mention the name +of this future work; it is the ‘Titan.’ In this work he means to be an +absolute Hecla, and shatter the ice of his country (and himself into +the bargain) to pieces; like the volcanoes in Iceland, he will spout +up a column of boiling water four feet in diameter to a height of +eighty-nine or ninety feet in the air, and that at such a temperature +that when this wet fire pillar falls down again and flows into the book +shops, it will still be warm enough to boil eggs hard or their mother +soft. “Then” (he always says—very sadly however—because he sees what +a hard matter it is to distinguish between full half of our battling +and harrying here below and a Jack Pudding farce and piece of utter +buffoonery and nonsense,—also, that the cradle of this life <i>rocks</i> +us, and <i>stills</i> us indeed, but carries us not a step on our +way)—“then may the <i>Arbor Toxicaria Macassariensis</i><a name="div2Ref_36" href="#div2_36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> of the Ideal, +beneath which I have lost a little hair already, go on poisoning me, +and dispatch me to the Land of the Ideal. At all events, I have knelt +down and prayed under the solemnising soul-elevating sighing roar of +its death-dealing branches. And why should there be a hut made ready +for the traveller beside the eternal well of truth, marked with the +title ‘Travellers’ REST,’ if no one ever enters it?” He wants, by way +of broad “flies” for his life stage on earth, merely a regular, +downright, <i>rainy year</i> or two (two will suffice); for a broad, bright, +open sky overpowers us, and weakens the hand’s pen power by making the +eyes over full. And here the book-maker differs markedly from his +provision-contractor, the papermaker, who shuts <i>his</i> mill up precisely +when the weather is <i>wet</i>. +</p> + +<p> +I should also be glad if readers would have the goodness to go once +more through the few chapters composing the first book—that they may +see what they really lack; and indeed a book which is not worth reading +twice is not worth reading once. +</p> + +<p> +In conclusion, I (albeit the most inconsiderable clubbist and +vote-possessor of all the public) would fain incite the author to the +production of other seedlings, suckers, and infantas of the same stamp, +trusting that the reading world may form its opinion on his work with +the same careful favour and indulgent approval as I have formed mine. +</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="sc">Jean Paul Fr. Richter.</span> +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:1em; text-indent:-1em">Hof in Voigtland,<br/> +<i>June 5th</i>, 1796. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Thus far my friend’s preface. Utterly absurd as it is, my own preface, +you see, has got to be concluded too, and at the end of it I can but +sign myself as my aforesaid man Friday and namesake does, videlicet, +</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="sc">Jean Paul Fr. Richter.</span> +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:1em; text-indent:-1em">Hof in Voigtland,<br/> +<i>June 5th</i>, 1796. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_book2"></a>BOOK II.</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch05"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">THE BROOM AND THE BESOM AS PASSION IMPLEMENTS—THE IMPORTANCE OF A +BOOKWRITER—DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS ON THE SUBJECT +OF CANDLE SNUFFING—THE PEWTER CUPBOARD—DOMESTIC HARDSHIPS AND +ENJOYMENTS. +</p> + +<p> +Catholics hold that there were fifteen mysteries in the life of +Christ—five of Joy, five of Woe, five of Glory. I have carefully +accompanied our hero through the five joyful mysteries of which the +Linden honey-month of his marriage has had to tell. I now come with him +to the five mysteries of Woe with which the series of the mysteries of +most marriages is—concluded. I trust, however, that his may yet be +found to contain the five of Glory also. +</p> + +<p> +In my first edition, I began this book of my hero’s story in an +unconcerned manner, with the above sentence just as if it were +literally correct. A second, and carefully revised edition, however, +renders it incumbent upon me to add, as an emendation, that the fifteen +mysteries in question do not come one after another, like steps of +stairs, or ancestors in a pedigree, but are shuffled up together like +good and bad cards in a hand. Yet, in spite of this shuffling, the joy +outbalances the sorrow, at any rate in its duration, as has been the +case, indeed, with this terrestrial globe, our planet itself, which has +survived several last days, and as a consequence still more springs, +that is to say, re-creations on a smaller scale. I mention all this to +save a number of poor devils of readers from the dreadful thought that +they have got to wade through a whole “Book II.” full of tears, partly +to be read about, partly to be shed out of compassion. I am not one of +those authors who, like very rattlesnakes, can sit and gaze upon +thousands of charmed people running up and down, a prey to every kind +of agitation, suspense, and anxiety, till his time comes to spring upon +them and swallow them up. +</p> + +<p> +When Siebenkæs awoke in the morning, he at once packed the devil of +jealousy, the marriage devil, off to the place where all other devils +dwell. For a calming sleep lowers the pulse of the soul’s fever—the +grains thereof are fever-bark for the cold fever of hate, and also for +the hot fever of love. Indeed he put down the tracing board, and with a +pantograph made a correct, reduced copy of his yesterday’s free +translation of the Engelkrautian countenance, and blackened it nicely. +When it was done, he said to his wife, for very love of her, “We’ll +send him the profile this morning, at once. It may be a good long while +before he comes to fetch it.” “Oh yes! he won’t be here till Wednesday, +and by that time he’ll have forgotten all about it.” “But I could bring +him here sooner than that,” Siebenkæs answered; “I need only send him +the Russian Trinity dollar of 1679 to get changed for me; he won’t +<i>send</i> me a farthing of the money he’ll bring it himself as he always +has done all through Leibgeber’s collection.” “Or you might send him +the dollar and the picture both,” said Lenette, “he would like it +better.” “Which would he like better?” he asked. She didn’t see exactly +what answer to make to this ridiculous question (whether she meant the +stamped face or the pictured one) sprung upon her like a mine in this +sort of way, and got out of her difficulty by saying, “Well, <i>the +things</i>, of course.” He spared her any further catechising. +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath, however, sent nothing but an answer to the effect that +he was beside himself with delight at the charming presents, and would +come to express his thanks in person, and to settle up with the +advocate, by the end of the following week at latest. The little dash +of bitter flavour which was perceptible to the taste in this unexpected +answer of the too happy Schulrath, was by no means sweetened away by +the arrival at this moment of the messenger of the Inheritance Office, +with Heimlicher von Blaise’s first proceedings in the matter of the +plaint lodged against him, consisting of a petition for three weeks’ +grace within which to lodge answers, a delay which the Court had +readily accorded. Siebenkæs, as his own poor’s advocate, lived in the +sure and certain hope that the promised land of inheritance, flowing +with milk and honey, would be reached by his children, though <i>he</i> +would in all probability have long ere that time perched in the +wilderness of the law; for justice is given to recompensing the +children, and the children’s children, for the uprightness of the +fathers, and for the goodness of their cause. It was more or less in +convenient, at the same time, to have nothing to live upon during one’s +own lifetime. The Russian Trinity dollar—for which the Schulrath +hadn’t even paid as yet—couldn’t be lived upon, and there were but one +or two queue ducats remaining of the treasury chest provided by +Leibgeber, for the carrying on of operations against the Heimlicher. +This gold coin and those few silver ones were (although I have said +nothing about it till now) the entire money contents remaining in the +Leibgeberian saviour’s scrip, and indeed none but a true disciple and +follower of the Saviour could be expected to hold out upon them. My +silence on this matter of the emptying of the coin cabinet may perhaps +be accepted in evidence of the fact that I try as much as I can to +avoid mentioning anything calculated to give my readers pain. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I shall get on somehow or other,” said Siebenkæs quite gleefully, +as he set to work harder than ever at his writing, with the view of +getting a considerable haul of money into the house, at the earliest +moment possible, in the shape of payment for his ‘Selection from the +Devil’s Papers.’ +</p> + +<p> +But there was a fresh purgatorial fire now being stoked and blown, till +it blazed hotter and hotter about him. I have refrained from saying +anything about the fire in question till now, though he has been +sitting roasting at it since the day before yesterday, Lenette being +the cook, and his writing table the larkspit. +</p> + +<p> +During the few days when the wordless quarrel was going on, he had got +into a habit of listening with the closest attention to what Lenette +was doing, as he sat writing away at his ‘Selection from the Devil’s +Papers’; and this sent his ideas all astray. The softest step, the very +slightest shake of anything affected him just as if he had had +hydrophobia, or the gout, and put one or two fine young ideas to death, +as a louder noise kills young canaries, or silkworms. +</p> + +<p> +He controlled himself very well at first. He pointed out to himself +that his wife really could <i>not</i> help moving about, and that as long as +she hadn’t a spiritual or glorified body and furniture to deal with, +she couldn’t possibly go about as silently as a sunbeam, or as her +invisible good and evil angels behind her. But while he was listening +to this <i>cours de morale</i>, this <i>collegium pietatis</i> of his own, he +lost the run of his satirical conceits and contexts, and his language +was deprived of a good deal of its sparkle. +</p> + +<p> +But the morning after the silhouette evening, when their hearts had +shaken hands and renewed the old royal alliance of Love, he could go +much more openly to work, and so, as soon as he had blackened +the profile, and had only his own original creations to go on +blackening—<i>i. e</i>. when he was going to begin working in his own +charcoal burning hut, he said to his wife, as a preliminary— +</p> + +<p> +“If you can help it, Lenette, don’t make very much noise to-day. I +really can hardly get on with my writing, if you do—you know it’s for +publication.” +</p> + +<p> +She said “I’m sure you can’t hear me—I go about so very quietly.” +</p> + +<p> +Although a man may be long past the years of his youthful follies, yet +in every year of his life there crop up a few weeks and days in which +he has fresh follies to commit. It was truly in a moment of one of +these days that Siebenkæs made the request above mentioned; for he had +now laid upon himself the necessity of lying in wait and watching to +see what Lenette would do in consequence of it. She skimmed over the +floor, and athwart the various webs of her household labours, with the +tread of a spider. Like her sex in general, she had disputed his little +point, merely for the sake of disputing it, not of doing what she was +asked not to do. Siebenkæs had to keep his ears very much on the alert +to hear what little noise she did make, either with her hands or her +feet—but he was successful, and did hear the greater part of it. +Unless when we are asleep we are more attentive to a slight noise than +to a loud one; and our author listened to her wherever she went, his +ear and his attention going about fixed to her like a pedometer +wherever she moved. In short he had to break off in the middle of the +satire, called “The Nobleman with the Ague,” and jump up and cry to her +(as she went creeping about), “For one whole hour have I been listening +and watching that dreadful tripping about on tiptoe. I had much rather +you would stamp about in a pair of the iron-soled sandals people used +to wear for beating time in.<a name="div2Ref_37" href="#div2_37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> Please go about as you usually do, +darling.” +</p> + +<p> +She complied, and went about <i>almost</i> as she usually did. He would have +very much liked to have prohibited the intermediate style of walking, +as he had the light and the heavy; but a husband doesn’t care to +contradict himself twice in one morning; once is enough. In the evening +he asked her if she would mind going about the house in her stockings +when he was at work at his writing. She would find it nice and cool for +the feet. “In fact,” he added, “as I’m working all the forenoon +literally for our bread, it would be well if you would do nothing that +isn’t absolutely necessary while I am at my literary work.” +</p> + +<p> +Next morning he sat in judgment (mentally) upon everything that went on +behind his back, and challenged it to see if it could produce the +free-pass of necessity—going on with his writing all the time, but +doing it worse than usual. This scribbling martyr endured a great many +things with as much patience as he could muster, but when Wendeline +took to whisking the straw under the green painted marriage TORUS with +a long broom, the cross grew too heavy for his shoulder. It happened, +moreover, that he had been reading two days before in an old Ephemeris +of scientific inquirers, that a clergyman, of the name of Johann +Pechmann, couldn’t bear the sound of a besom—that it nearly took his +breath away, and that he once took to his heels and bolted when a +crossing sweeper accidentally ran against him. The effect of his having +read this was, that he was involuntarily more observant and intolerant +of a cognate discomfort. He called out to the domestic sweeper in the +next room, from his chair where he sat— +</p> + +<p> +“Lenette, do <i>not</i> go on scrubbing and switching about with that besom +of yours, it drives away the whole of my best ideas out of my head. +There was an old clergyman once of the name of Pechmann, who would +rather have been condemned to sweep a crossing in Vienna himself, than +to listen to another sweeping it—he would rather have been flogged +with a birch-broom, than have heard the infernal sound of it swishing +and whishing. How is a man to get a coherent idea, fit to go to the +printer and publisher, into his head with all this sweeping and +scrubbing going on?” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette did what every good wife, and her lap dog, would have done; she +left off the noise by degrees. At last she laid down the besom, and +merely whisked three straws and a little feather fluff gently with the +hair-broom, from under the bed, not making as much noise even as he did +with his writing. However the editor of the ‘Devil’s Papers’ managed to +hear it, in a manner beyond his fondest hopes. He rose up, went to the +bedroom door and called in at the room, “My darling, it’s every bit as +hellish a torment to me if I can hear it <i>at all</i>. You may fan those +miserable sweepings with a peacock’s feather, or a holy-water asperger, +or you may puff them away with a pair of bellows, but I and my poor +book must suffer and pay the piper all the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m quite done now, at all events,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He set to work again, and gaily took up the threads of his fourth +satire, “Concerning the five Monsters and their receptacles, whereon I +at first intended to subsist.” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Lenette gently closed the door, so that he was driven to the +conclusion that there was something or other going on to annoy him +again in his Gehenna and place of penitence. He laid down his pen and +cried— +</p> + +<p> +“Lenette, I can’t hear very distinctly what it is—but you’re up to +something or other in there that I can <i>not</i> stand. For God’s dear +sake, stop it at once, do put a period to my martyrdom and sorrows of +Werther, for this one day—come here, let me see you.” +</p> + +<p> +She answered, all out of breath with hard work— +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not doing anything.” +</p> + +<p> +He got up and opened the door of his chamber of torture. There was his +wife rubbing away with a piece of grey flannel, polishing up the green +rails of the bed. The author of this history once lay sick of smallpox +in a bed of this kind, and knows them well. But the reader may not be +aware that a green slumber cage of this kind is a good deal like a +magnified canaries’ breeding cage with its latticed folding doors or +portcullises, and that this trellis and hothouse for dreams is, though +less handsome in appearance, much better for health than our heavy +bastille towers all hung about with curtains which keep away every +breath of fresh air. The advocate swallowed about half a pint of +bedroom air, and said, in measured accents— +</p> + +<p> +“You’re at your brushing and sweeping again, are you? although you know +quite well that I’m sitting there working like a slave for you and +myself too, and that I’ve been writing away for the last hour with +scarcely an idea in my head. Oh! my heavenly better half! out with all +your cartridges at one shot, for God’s sake, and don’t finish me off +altogether with that rag of yours.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette, full of astonishment said, “It’s simply impossible, old man. +that you can hear me in the next room”—and polished away harder than +ever. He took her hand, somewhat hastily, though not roughly, and said +in a louder tone, “Come, get up!—It’s exactly that which I complain +of, that I <i>can’t</i> hear you in the next room; I’m obliged to rack my +brains to guess what you’re at—and the only ideas left in my head are +connected with brushing and scrubbing, so that all the brilliant +notions which I might otherwise be putting down on paper are driven +away. My darling child, nobody could possibly sit and work away here +more composedly and contentedly than I, if it were only grape-shot and +canister, howitzer shells, and hundred-pounders that you were banging +away with at my back out of these embrasures of yours. What it is that +I really can <i>not</i> stand, is a <i>quiet</i> noise.” +</p> + +<p> +All this talk having put him a little out of temper, he fetched her out +of the room, rag and all, saying— +</p> + +<p> +“It does seem a little hard that, while I’m labouring away here with +all my might, working myself almost to death, to provide a little +entertainment for the reading public, a regular bear-baiting pit should +be started in my own room, and that an author’s very bed should be +turned into a siege-trench, and arrows and fire-balls sent about his +ears out of it. There, I shan’t be writing while we’re at dinner, I’ll +talk the thing out at full length with you then.” +</p> + +<p> +At noon, then,<a name="div2Ref_38" href="#div2_38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> as he was about to enter on the subject of the +morning’s tourney, he had first to hold a prayer-tourney. I mean this: +“prayers” do not, in Nürnberg and Kuhschnappel, mean a certain +hereditary office and service of mass in a court chapel, but—the +ringing of the twelve o’clock bell. Now the dining-table of our couple +stood against the wall, and was not put in the middle of the floor +except for meals. Well, Siebenkæs never succeeded above twice during +his married life in having this table brought forward <span class="sc2">BEFORE</span> the soup +came in (for if a woman <span class="sc2">ONCE</span> forgets a thing, she goes on forgetting it +a thousand times running<a name="div2Ref_39" href="#div2_39"><sup>[39]</sup></a>), though he preached his lungs as dry as a +fox‘s (which are used for curing ours); both soup and table were always +moved together, after the soup came in, without the spilling of a +greater quantity of the latter than one might have used in swallowing a +pill. +</p> + +<p> +To-day this was the case as usual. Siebenkæs slowly chewed the pill +which he swallowed with the soup. The delay in moving the table he +observed anxiously (as if it had been a delay in the arrival of +an equinox), with a long face and slow breathing, and when the +soup-libation was duly poured as usual, he broke out as follows, in a +calm tone of voice, however— +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is, Lenette, we are on board a good ship. At sea, you know, +people spill their soup because their vessel rolls and pitches—and +ours is spilt for a similar reason. See here, the dinner-table +and the morning besom are both in a tale together; they are two +conspirators who will blow out your husband’s candle—to use a strong +expression—before they have done.” +</p> + +<p> +This, the exordium of his sermon, was followed by way of hymn, by the +arrival of the town fool of Kuhschnappel, who brought in a great sheet +of paper containing an invitation to the shooting match on St. Andrew’s +Day, the 30th of November. Every one of us must, I am sure, have +gathered from what has already been said that the only money left in +the house was the queue-ducat. At the same time, Siebenkæs couldn’t +leave the shooting-club, without thereby granting to himself a +certificate of poverty, a <i>testimonium paupertatis</i>, in the face of the +whole town. And really a shooting-ticket for this match was almost as +good as mining shares or East India stock to a man who was as good a +shot as Siebenkæs. It would also give him an opportunity of doing that +public honour to his wife which she, as a senate clerk’s daughter from +Augspurg, had a right to expect. Unfortunately, however, the grave man +of folly couldn’t be got to give change for the curious queue-ducat, +particularly as Siebenkæs aroused his suspicions with respect to it +himself, by saying. “This is a very good tail or queue-ducat, I assure +you. I don’t wear a tail myself,” he added, “but that’s no reason why a +ducat shouldn’t, if the King of Prussia chooses to immortalise his own +by having it stamped upon it. Wife, would you get our landlord, the +hairdresser, to come up; nobody can know better than he whether it’s a +queue-ducat or not, seeing he has queues (not upon ducats) in his hands +every day.” The pickle-herring of Kuhschnappel didn’t vouchsafe the +ghost of a smile at this. The hairdresser came, and declared it to be a +queue, and civilly took it away himself to get it changed. Hairdressers +can run; in five minutes he brought the change for the ducat. +</p> + +<p> +When the melancholy buffoon had pocketed his portion of it, Lenette’s +face was all over double interjections and marks of interrogation; +wherefore Siebenkæs resumed his midday sermon. “The principal prizes,” +he said, “are pewter dishes and sums of money for hitting the bird, and +mostly provisions for the other marks we shoot at. I suspect that you +and I shall dine on St. Andrew’s Day upon a nice piece of roast meat in +a new dish, both of which I shall have shot into your kitchen, if I +only take a little pains. And at all events don’t worry yourself, +darling, because our money’s nearly all gone. Take refuge behind me. I +am your sandbag, your gabion, your shelter trench, and with my rifle, +more certainly still with my pen, I feel pretty sure I shall keep the +devil of poverty at his distance, till my precious guardian hands over +my mother’s property. Only for God’s sake don’t let <i>your</i> work +interrupt <i>mine</i>. Your rag and your besom have cost me at least sixteen +currency dollars this morning. For supposing I get eight imperial +dollars a printed sheet for my Devilish Papers (counting the imperial +dollar at ninety kreuzer)—and I ought, to get more—I should have +earned forty-eight currency dollars this morning if I had written a +(printed) sheet and a half. But you see I had to stop in the middle of +it and expend a great many words upon you, for none of which I get a +single kreuzer. You should look upon me as a fat old spider stowed away +in a box to shrivel up in time into a precious gold nugget or jewel. +Whenever I take a dip of ink I draw a thread of gold out of the ink +bottle, as I’ve often told you, and (as the proverb says) the morning +hours have gold in their mouths (Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund). Go on +with your dinner, and listen. I’ll just take this opportunity of +explaining to you the principal points in which the preciousness of an +author consists, and so give you the key to a good many things. In +Swabia, in Saxony, and Pomerania, there are towns in which there are +people who appraise authors as our master butcher here does beef. They +are usually known by the name of tasters or rulers of taste, because +they try the flavour of every book as it comes out, and then tell the +people whether they’ll like it or not. We authors in our irritation +often call these people critics, but they might bring an action against +us for libel for so doing. Now as these directors of taste seldom write +books themselves, they have all the more time to read and find fault +with other people’s. Yet it does sometimes happen that some of them +have written bad books themselves, and consequently know a bad book in +a moment when they come across one. Many become patron saints of +authors and of their books for the same reason that St. John Nepomuck +became the patron saint of bridges and those who cross them; because he +was once thrown off one into the water. Now these scribblings of mine +will be sent to these gentlemen as soon as they are in print (as your +hymn-book is). And they’ll peer all through my productions to see +whether or not I’ve written them quite legibly and distinctly (not too +large or too small), whether I’ve put any wrong letters, a little e for +a big, or an f instead of a ph, whether the hyphen-strokes are too long +or too short, and all that sort of thing: indeed they often even give +opinions about the thoughts in the book (which they have nothing to do +with). Now you see, if you go on scrubbing and swishing about with +besoms behind me, I shall keep writing all sorts of stuff and nonsense, +and it’ll all be printed. Of course that’s a terrible thing to happen +to a man, for these tasters tear great frightful holes and wounds in +the paper however fine it is, with nails as long as fingers +(buttonmakers’ nails are shorter, but not circumcisers’ among the +Jews), before they give it a name to carry about with it, as the +circumcisers do to the Jew boys. And after this, they circulate a slip +of unsized paper, in which they find fault with me, and give me a bad +name, all over the empire, in Saxony and Pomerania, and tell all Swabia +in so many plain words that I’m an ass. May the devil confound their +impertinence! This is the sort of birching, you see, that besom of +yours will be getting me in for. Whereas, if I write beautifully and +legibly, and with proper attention and ability—and every sheet of my +Devilish Papers is so written—if I carefully weigh and consider every +word and every page before I write it, if I am playful in one place, +instructive in another, pleasing in all,—in that case I am bound to +tell you, Lenette, that the tasters are people who are quite capable of +appreciating work of that sort, and would think nothing of sitting down +and circulating papers in which the least they would say of me would be +that I had certainly brought something away from college in my head, +and had a little to show for my studies. In short, they would say, they +hadn’t expected it of me, and there was really something <i>in me</i>. Now a +panegyric of this kind upon a husband is reflected, of course, upon his +wife, and when the Augspurg people are all asking ‘Where does he live, +this Siebenkæs whom everybody’s talking of?’ there are sure to be lots +of folks in the Fuggery to answer, ‘Oh! he lives in Kuhschnappel, his +wife was a daughter of Engelkraut, the senate clerk, and a very good +wife she is to him.’” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve told me all that about bookmaking hundreds of times,” she +answered. “And it’s just what the bookbinder says too; and I am sure +<i>he</i> has all the best books through his hands, binding them.” +</p> + +<p> +This allusion to his repetitions of himself, though not meant +ill-temperedly, he didn’t very much relish. In fact, the habit had +hitherto been, as it were, incubating unperceived in him, as a fever +does in its early stage. Husbands, even those who are sage and of few +words, talk to their wives with the same boundless liberty and +unrestraint as they do to their own selves; and a man repeats himself +<i>to</i> himself immeasurably oftener than to anybody else, and that +without so much as observing that he does it, let alone taking any +count of how often. The wife, however, both observes and counts; +accustomed as she is to hear the cleverest (and most unintelligible) +remarks from her husband’s lips daily, she can’t help remembering them +when they occur again. +</p> + +<p> +The hairdresser reappeared unexpectedly, bringing a fleeting cloud with +him. He said he had been to all the poor devils in the house to see if +he could get as much of the Martinmas rent out of them in advance as +would pay his subscription to the shooting match, but that they were a +set of church mice and he hadn’t succeeded. The whole garrison of them +were naturally unequal to the payment of an impost of this description +six whole weeks before it was due, inasmuch as the majority of them +didn’t see how they were to pay it when it <i>was</i> due. So the Saxon came +to the grandee of his house, to the “Lord of Ducats” as he styled the +advocate. Siebenkæs couldn’t find in his heart to disappoint the +patient soul with another “no” on the top of those he had borne so +good-humouredly; his wife and he scraped together the little small +change they had left out of the ducat, and sent him away rejoicing with +half of the rent, three gulden. All they had left for themselves +was—the question what they should do for light in the evening; for +there weren’t even a couple of groschen in the house to get half a +pound of candles, and there were no candles <i>in natura</i>. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot say that he here turned deadly pale, or fainted, or began to +rave. Praise be to every manly soul who has drunk the icy whey of +stoicism for only half a spring, and does not fall down paralysed and +frozen, like a woman, before the chill spectre of penury. In an age +which has had all its strongest sinews cut through except the universal +one, money, any diatribe, even the most extravagant, against riches, is +nobler and more useful than the most accurately just depreciation of +poverty. For pasquinades on gold dirt are agreeable to the rich, +reminding them that though their riches may take to themselves wings, +true happiness does not depend thereon; while the poor derive from them +not bitterer feeling merely, but also the sweeter satisfaction of +conquering the same. All that is base in man—thoughts, fancies, what +we look on as being examples—all join in one chorus in praise of gold; +why should we desire to deprive poverty of her true reserve force, her +<i>chevaliers d’honneur</i>, philosophy and beggars’ pride? +</p> + +<p> +The first thing Siebenkæs opened was not his mouth, but the door, and +then the pewter cupboard in the kitchen, from which he carefully and +with a good deal of gravity took down a bell-shaped tureen and three +pewter plates, and put them on a chair. Lenette could no longer stand +by in silence; she clasped her hands and said in a faint voice of +shame, “Merciful Providence! is it come to selling our dishes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m only going to turn them into silver,” he said; “as kings make +church bells into dollars, so shall we make our bell-dishes into coin. +There’s nothing you need be ashamed about in converting trash of table +ware, the coffins of beasts, into currency, when Duke Christian of +Brunswick turned a king’s silver coffin into dollars in 1662. Is a +plate an apostle, do you think? Great monarchs have taken many an +apostle, if he happened to be a silver one, Hugo of St. Caro and others +as well, divided them (as it were) into chapters, verses, and legends, +sent them to the mint, and then dispatched them off all over the world +in that analysed form.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! stupid nonsense,” she answered. +</p> + +<p> +Some few readers will probably say “What else was it?” and I ought long +ago to have apologized, perhaps, for the style of speech, so +incomprehensible to Lenette, which the advocate makes use of. +</p> + +<p> +He justified it satisfactorily to himself by the consideration that his +wife always had some DISTANT idea of what he was talking about, even +when he made use of the most learned technical expressions, and the +farthest-fetched plays upon words, because of its being good practice, +and of his liking to hear himself do it. “Women,” he would repeat, +“have a distant and dim comprehension of all these things, and +therefore don’t waste, in long tedious efforts to discover the precise +signification of these unintelligibilities, precious time which might +be better employed.” This, I may observe, is not much encouragement for +Reinhold’s ‘Lexicon to Jean Paul’s Levana,’ nor for me personally +either, in some senses. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! stuff and nonsense” had been Lenette’s answer. Firmian merely +asked her to bring the pewter into the sitting-room, and he would talk +the matter over sensibly. But he might as well have set forth his +reasons before a woman’s skin stuffed with straw. What she chiefly +blamed him for, was that by his contribution to the shooting-club purse +he had emptied hers. And thus she herself suggested to him the best +answer he could have made. He said, “It was an angel that put it in my +head; because on St. Andrew’s Day I shall regain everything that I turn +into silver now, and repewterise it immediately. To please you, I shall +keep not only the tureen and the plates I get as prizes, but all the +rest of the pewter ware, and put it all into your cupboard. I assure +you I had made up my mind before to sell all my prizes.” +</p> + +<p> +What was to be done, then? There was no help for it. This banished and +expatriated table ware was lowered in the darkness of evening into old +Sabel’s basket—and she was celebrated all over the town for +transacting this sort of commission agency or transfer business, with +as discreet a silence as if she were dealing in stolen gold. “Nobody +gets it out of <i>me</i>,” she would say, “whose the things are. The +treasurer, who’s dead and gone poor man—you know I sold everything he +had in the world for him—he often used to say there was never the +equal of me.” +</p> + +<p> +But, my poor dear young couple, I fear this Sabbath<a name="div2Ref_40" href="#div2_40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> or “Descent of +the Saviour into Hades” is but little likely to help you long, in that +antechamber of hell which you’ve got into. The flames are gone from +about you to-day, certainly, and a cool sea-breeze is refreshing you, +but tomorrow and the day after the old smoke and the old fire will be +blazing at your hearts! However, I don’t want to put any restrictions +upon your trade in tin. We’re quite right to have a good dinner to-day +though we know perfectly well we shall be just every bit as hungry +to-morrow again. +</p> + +<p> +So the next morning Siebenkæs begged that he might be allowed to be all +the quieter that day because he had been obliged to talk so much the +day before. Our dear Lenette, who was a live washing-machine and +scouring-mill, and in whose eyes the washing bill and the bill of fare +had much of the weight of a confessor’s certificate, would sooner have +let go her hold of everything in the world—her husband included—than +of the duster and the besom. She thought this was merely <i>his</i> +obstinate persistency, whereas it was really her own, in blowing the +organ bellows and thundering away upon her pedal reed stops right +behind her author’s back during the morning hours, whose mouths had two +kinds of gold in them for <i>him</i>, namely gold from the golden age, and +ordinary metallic gold. She might have played with a thirty-two feet +stop out in the afternoon as long as she liked, but she wasn’t to be +got out of her usual daily routine. A woman is the most heterogeneous +compound of obstinate will and self-sacrifice that I have ever met +with; she would let her head be cut off by the headsman of Paris for +her husband’s sake, very likely, but not a single hair of it. And she +can deny herself to almost any extent for others’ good, but not one bit +for her own. She can forego sleep for three nights running for a sick +person, but not one minute of a nap before bed-time, to ensure herself +a better night’s sleep in bed. Neither the souls of the blest, nor +butterflies, though neither of them possess stomachs, can eat less than +a woman going to a ball or to her wedding, or than one cooking for her +guests; but if it’s only her doctor and her own health that forbid her +some Esau’s mess or other, she eats it that instant. Now men’s +sacrifices are all just turned the opposite way. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette, impelled by two imposing forces, what she was asked to do and +what she wanted to do, tried to find the feminine line of the +resultant, and hit upon the middle course of stopping her scouring and +sweeping as long as he was sitting at his writing. But the moment he +got up, and went to the piano for a couple of minutes, or to the +window, or across the doorstep, that instant back she would bring her +washing and scrubbing instruments of torture into the room again. +Siebenkæs wasn’t long in becoming cognisant of this terrible +alternation and relieving-of-the-guard between her besom and his +(satirical) one; and the way she watched and lay in wait for his +movements drove all the ideas in his head higgledy-piggledy. At first +he bore it with really very great patience, as great as ever a husband +has, patience, that is, which lasts for a short time. But after +reflecting for a considerable period in silence, that the public, as +well as he, were sufferers by this room-cleaning business, and that all +posterity was, in a manner, watching and hanging upon every stroke of +that besom, which might do its work just as well in the afternoon when +he would only be at his law papers—the tumour of his anger suddenly +broke, and he grew mad, <i>i. e</i>. madder than he was before, and ran up +to her and cried— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! this is the very devil! At it again, eh! I see what you’re about. +You watch till I get up from the table! Just be kind enough to finish +me off at once; hunger and worry will kill me before Easter, whether or +not. Good God! It’s a thing I really can <i>not</i> comprehend. She sees as +well as possible that my book is our larder—that there are whole +rations of bread in every page of it—yet she holds my hands the entire +morning, so that I can’t do a line of it. Here I’ve been sitting on the +nest all this time and only hatched as far as letter E, where I +describe the ascent of Justice to heaven. Oh! Lenette! Lenette!” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said Lenette, “it’s all the same whatever I do, it’s sure +to be wrong; do let me tidy the house properly, like any other woman.” +</p> + +<p> +And she asked him, in a simple manner, why it was that the bookbinder’s +little boy (the language is mine, not hers), who played fantasias the +whole day long upon a child’s toy fiddle, composing and enjoying whole +Alexander’s Feasts upon it, didn’t disturb him with his screeching +<i>un</i>harmonical progressions—and how he bore the chimneysweep’s +sweeping the other day so much better than he did her sweeping of the +room. And as he couldn’t quite manage to condense, just in a moment, +into few words the demonstration of the magnitude of the difference +which existed between these things, he found it better to get into a +rage again, and say— +</p> + +<p> +“Do you suppose I’m going to make a great long speech and explanation +gratis, and lose dollar after dollar at my work? <i>Himmel</i>! <i>Kreuz</i>! +<i>Wetter</i>! The municipal code, the Roman pandects, forbid a coppersmith +even to enter a street where a professor is working, and here’s my own +wife harder than an old jurist—and not only that—she’s the +coppersmith herself. I’ll tell you what it is, Lenette, I shall really +speak to the Schulrath about this.” This did a great deal of service. +</p> + +<p> +The produce of the Trinity dollar here arrived before the Schulrath; a +piece of polite attention which no one would have expected from a man +of so much learning and knowledge. No doubt all my readers will be as +much delighted as if they were husbands of Lenette themselves at the +fact that she was a perfect angel all the afternoon; her hands made no +more noise at their work than her fingers or her needle; she even put +off the doing of several things which were not necessary. She +accompanied a sister in the oratorical art, who came in with a divine +bonnet (in her hands, to be altered), all the way down stairs, not so +much out of politeness as thoughtfulness, that all the points of +principal importance connected with the doing up of the bonnet, which +had already been settled, might be gone over again two or three times +out of the advocate’s hearing. +</p> + +<p> +This touched the old noise-hunter, and went to the weak and tender +spot in him, his heart. He sought long in himself for a fitting +thank-offering in return, till he at last hit upon quite a new sort of +one. +</p> + +<p> +“Listen, child,” he said, taking her hand very affectionately; +“wouldn’t it be more reasonable in me if I were to amuse myself with my +writing in the <i>evening</i>? I mean, if the husband were to do his +creating at a time when the wife had no washing to do. Just think what +a life of nectar and ambrosia that would be; we should sit opposite to +each other with a candle between us—you at your sewing, I at my +writing—the other people in the house would all have their work done +and be at their beer—of course there wouldn’t be customers with +bonnets coming at that time of night to make themselves visible and +audible. The evenings will be getting longer too, and of course I shall +have the more time for my writing fun, but we need say nothing about +that now. What do you think, or what do you <i>say</i> (if you like the +expression better), to this new style of life? Remember too, that we’re +quite rich again now—the Russian Trinity dollar is like so much found +money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! it will be delightful,” she said, “I shall be able to do all my +household work in the morning, as a proper reasonable housekeeper +should.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, just so,” he answered, “I shall write away quietly at my satires +all morning, then wait till evening, and go on where I left off.” +</p> + +<p> +The evening of nectar and ambrosia came duly on, and was quite without +a rival among all evenings that had gone before it. A young married +couple, sitting one on each side of a table, working away quietly at +their work, with a candle between them, have a considerable notion what +happiness is. He was all happy thoughts and kisses; she all smiles, and +what little noise she made with the frying-pan seemed no louder to him +than what she made with her needle. “When people are earning double +working-pay by the light of one candle,” he said, greatly delighted at +the domestic reformation, “they needn’t, as far as I see, restrict +themselves to a miserable dip, the thickness of a worm, which they can +see nothing by, unless it be the wretchedness of its own light. +To-morrow we’ll set up a mould candle, and no more about it.” +</p> + +<p> +As I take some credit to myself for selecting for narration in this +story such events only as are of universal interest, it will be +sufficient cursorily to mention that the mould candle duly appeared +next evening, and kindled a feeble strife, because, <i>apropos</i> of this +candle, the advocate once more brought forward a new theory of his, +concerning the lighting of candles. He held the somewhat schismatic +opinion that the rational way of lighting all candles, more +particularly thick ones, was to light them at the thick end, and not at +the top or thin end; and that this was the reason of there being two +wicks projecting from every candle. “A law of combustion,” he would +add, “in support of which I need only refer (at least for women of +sense) to the self-evident truth that, when a candle is burning down, +it keeps growing larger and larger at its lower extremity—just as +people who are burning down from debauchery grow thicker at theirs, +with fat and dropsy. If we light the candle at the top, we find the +result to be a useless lump, plug, or stump of tallow running all over +our candlestick. Whereas, if we light it at the bottom, the liquefied +grease from the thick end wraps itself gradually and with the most +exquisite symmetry all over the thinner end as if feeding it, and +equalising its proportions.” +</p> + +<p> +In reply to which, Lenette, with some force, adduced Shaftesbury’s +touchstone of truth, ridicule. “Why, everybody that came in of an +evening, and noticed that I had put my candle upside down in the +candlestick, would burst out laughing; and it would be the wife that +everybody would blame.” So that a mutual treaty of peace had to put a +period to this battle of the candle, to the effect that he should light +his candle at the bottom, and she hers at the top. And for the present, +as the candle common to both parties happened to be thick at the top, +he agreed to admit, without objection, the erroneous method of +lighting. +</p> + +<p> +However, the Devil, who crosses and blesses himself at such treaties of +peace, managed so to play his cards, that on this very day Siebenkæs +chanced, in his reading, to come upon the touching anecdote of the +younger Pliny’s wife holding the lamp for her husband that he might see +to write. And it occurred to him that, now that he was getting along so +swimmingly with his selection from the said Devil’s Papers, it would be +a splendid arrangement, and save him many interruptions, if Lenette +would snuff the candle always instead of his doing it himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said she, “I shall be delighted.” The first fifteen or +twenty minutes passed, and everything seemed to be all right. +</p> + +<p> +The above period having elapsed, he cocked up his chin towards the +candle, by way of reminder to her to snuff it. Next, he gently touched +the snuffers with the tip of his pen, with the like object, not saying +anything however; and a little while after that, he moved the +candlestick a little bit, and said softly, “The candle.” Matters now +began to assume a more serious aspect; he began to observe and watch +with greater attention the gradual obscuration of his paper, and +consequently the very snuffers which, in Lenette’s hands, had promised +to throw so much light on his labours, became the means of impeding his +progress quite as effectually as the crabs did Hercules in his battle +with the hydra. The two wretched ideas, “snuff” and “snuffers,” took +bodily shape, and danced hand in hand, with a sprightly pertness up and +down on every letter of his most biting satires. “Lenette,” he had soon +to say again, “please to amputate that stupid black stump there, on +both our accounts.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me, have I been forgetting it?” she said, and snuffed it in a +great hurry. +</p> + +<p> +Readers of a historical turn—such as I should wish mine to be—can now +see that things couldn’t but get worse and worse, and more and more out +of joint. He had often to stop, making letters a yard or so in length, +waiting till some beneficent hand should remove the black thorn from +the rose of light, till, at length, he broke out with the word “Snuff!” +Then he took to varying his verbs, saying, “Enlighten!” or “Behead!” or +“Nip-off.” Or he endeavoured to introduce an agreeable variety by using +other forms of speech, such as “The candle’s cap, Capmaker;” “There’s a +long spot in the sun again;” or, “This is a charming <i>chiaroscuro</i>, +well adapted for night thoughts in a beautiful Correggio-night; but +snuff away all the same.” +</p> + +<p> +At last, shortly before supper, when the charcoal stack in the flame +had really attained a great height, he inhaled half a river of air into +his lungs, and, slowly dropping it out again, said, in a grimly mild +manner, “You don’t snuff a bit—as far as I can see, the black +funereal pyre might rise up to the ceiling for all you would care. All +right! I prefer to be the candle-snuffer of this theatre myself till +supper-time; and while we’re at supper I shall just say to you, as a +rational man, what there is to say on the subject.” “Oh! yes, please,” +she said, quite delighted. +</p> + +<p> +When she had set four eggs on the table, two for each, he commenced: +“You see, I had been looking forward to my working at night being +attended with several advantages, because I thought you would have +managed this easy little task of snuffing the candle always at the +right time, as a Roman lady of high rank made herself do duty as a +candlestick for her celebrated husband, Pliny junior (to use a +commercial expression), and held his light for him. I was mistaken, it +appears; for, unfortunately, I can’t write with my toes under the +table, like a person with no arms, nor yet in the dark, as a +clairvoyant might. The only use the candle is to me, in the +circumstances, is that it serves as an Epictetus lamp, enabling me to +get some practice in stoicism. It had often as much as twelve inches of +eclipse, like a sun, and I wished in vain, darling, for an invisible +eclipse—such as frequently occurs in the heavens. The cursed slag of +our candle hatches just these obscure ideas and gloomy night thoughts, +which authors (too) often have. Whereas, gracious goodness! if you had +only snuffed, as you ought to have done——” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re in fun, are you not?” she asked. “My stitches are much smaller +than your strokes, and I’m sure I saw quite well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, dear,” he continued, “I’ll proceed to point out to you that, on +the grounds of psychology and mental science, it isn’t that it matters +a bit whether a person who is writing and thinking <i>sees</i> a little more +or less distinctly or not, it’s the snuffers and the snuff that he +can’t get out of his head, and they get behind his spiritual legs, trip +up his ideas, and stop him, just as a log does a horse hobbled to it. +For even when you’ve only just snuffed the candle, and I’m in the full +enjoyment of the light, I begin to look out for the instant when you’ll +do it next. Now, this watching being in itself neither visible nor +audible, can be nothing but a thought, or idea; and as every thought +has the property of occupying the mind to the exclusion of all others, +it follows that all an author’s other and more valuable ideas are sent +at once to the dogs. But this is by no means the worst of the affair. +I, of course, <i>ought</i> not to have had to occupy my head with the idea +of candle-snuffing any more than with that of snuff-taking; but when +the ardently longed-for snuffing never comes off at all, the black +smut on the ripe ear of light keeps growing longer—the darkness +deepening—a regular funereal torch feebly casting its ray upon a +half-dead writer, who can’t drive from his head the thought of the +conjugal hand which could snap all the fetters asunder with one single +snip;—then, my dearest Lenette, it’s not easy for the said writer to +help writing like an ass, and stamping like a dromedary. At least, I +express my own opinion and experience on the subject!” +</p> + +<p> +On this, she assured him that, if he were really serious, she would +take great care to do it properly next evening. +</p> + +<p> +And, in truth, this story must give her credit for keeping her word, +for she not only snuffed much oftener than the night before, but, the +fact is, she <i>hardly ever left off</i> snuffing, particularly after he had +nodded his head once or twice by way of thanks. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t snuff <i>too</i> often, darling,” he said, at length, but very, very +kindly. “If you attempt <i>too</i> fine sub-sub-subdivisions (fractions of +fractions of fractions of fractions) of the wick, it’ll be almost as +bad as ever—a candle snuffed too short gives as little light as one +with an overgrown wick which you may apply to the lights of the world +and of the Church, that’s to say if you <i>can</i>. It’s only for a short +while <i>before</i> and <i>after</i> the snuffing, <i>entre chien et loup</i> as +it +were, that that delicious middle-age of the soul prevails when it can +see to perfection; when it is truly a life for the gods, a just +proportion of black and white, both in the candle and on the book.” +</p> + +<p> +I and others really do not see any great reason to congratulate +ourselves upon this new turn of events. The poor’s advocate has +evidently laid upon himself the additional burden, that all the time he +is writing he has to keep watching and calculating,—superficially +perhaps, but still, watching and calculating—the mean term, or +middle-distance, between the long wick and the short. And what time has +he left for his work? +</p> + +<p> +Some minutes after, when the snuffing came a little too soon, he asked, +though somewhat doubtfully, “Dirty clothes for the wash already?” Next +time, as she let it be almost too long before she snuffed, he looked at +her interrogatively, and said, “Well? well?” +</p> + +<p> +“In one instant,” said she. By-and-by, he having got rather more deeply +absorbed than usual in his writing, and she in her work, he found, when +he suddenly came to himself and looked, one of the longest spears in +the candle that had yet appeared, and with two or three thieves round +it to the bargain. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, good Lord! ’Pon my soul, this is really the life of a dog!” cried +he; and, seizing the snuffers in a fury, he snuffed the candle—out. +</p> + +<p> +This holiday pause of darkness afforded a capital opportunity for +jumping up, flying into a passion, and pointing out to Lenette more in +detail how it was that she plagued and tormented him, however admirably +he might have arranged things; and, like all women, had neither rhyme +nor reason in her ways of doing things, always snuffing either too +close or not close enough. She, however, lighted the candle without +saying a word, and he got into a greater rage than before, and demanded +to be informed whether he had ever as yet asked anything of her but the +merest trifles possible to conceive, and if anybody but his own wedded +wife would have hesitated for a moment to attend to them. “Just answer +me,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer him; she set the freshly-lighted candle on the +table, and tears were in her eyes. It was the first time he had caused +her a tear, since her marriage. In a moment, like a person magnetised, +he saw and diagnosed all that was diseased and unhealthy in his system; +and, on the spot, he cast out the old Adam, and shied him +contemptuously away into a corner. This was an easy task for <i>him</i>; his +heart was always so open to love and justice, that the moment these +goddesses came into view, the tone of anger with which he had commenced +a sentence would fall into gentle melody before he reached the end of +it; he could stop his battle-axe in the middle of its stroke. +</p> + +<p> +So that a household peace was here concluded, the instruments thereof +being one pair of moist eyes and one pair of bright kind ones; and a +Westphalia treaty of peace accorded one candle to each party, with +absolute freedom of snuffing. +</p> + +<p> +But the peace was soon embittered, inasmuch as Penia, goddess of +poverty (who has thousands of invisible churches all about the country, +where most houses are her tabernacles and lazar cells), began to make +manifest her bodily presence and her all-controlling power. There was +no more money in the house. But, rather than place his honour and his +freedom in pledge, and incur obligations which he had less and less +prospect of repaying—I mean, rather than borrow—he would have sold +all he had, and himself into the bargain, like the old German. It is +said, the national debt of England, if counted out in dollars, would +make a ring round the earth, like a second equator; however, I have not +as yet measured this nose-ring of the British Lion, this annular +eclipse, or halo, round the sun of Britain, myself. But I know that +Siebenkæs would have considered a negative money-girdle of this sort +about his waist to be a penance-belt stuck full of spines, or an iron +ring, such as people who tow boats have on; a girdle compressing the +heart in a fatal manner. Even supposing he were to borrow, and then +stop payment, as nations and banking-houses do—a catastrophe which +debtors and aristocratic persons, who have their wits about them, +manage to avoid without difficulty, by the simple expedient of never +<i>beginning</i> payment—yet, having only one friend whom he could convert +into a creditor (Stiefel), he couldn’t possibly have seen this dear +friend, who was in the first rank of his spiritual creditors already, +figuring in the fifth rank, or that of the unpaid. He therefore avoided +such a two-fold transgression as this would have been—a sin against +both friendship and honour—by pledging things of less value, namely, +household furniture. +</p> + +<p> +He went back (but alone) to the pewter cupboard in the kitchen, and +peeped through the rail to see whether there were two ranks of dishes +or three. Alas! there wag but one rear-rank man of a plate standing +behind his front-rank man, like double notes of interrogation. He +marched the rear-rank man to the front accordingly, and gave him for +travelling companions and fellow-refugees a herring-dish, a sauce-boat, +and a salad-bowl. Having effected this reduction of his army, he +extended the remaining troops so as to occupy a wider front, and +subdivided the three large gaps into twenty small ones. He then moved +these disbanded soldiers to the sitting-room, and went and called +Lenette, who was in the bookbinder’s room. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been looking at our pewter cupboard for the last five or ten +minutes,” he said. “I really shouldn’t have noticed, if I hadn’t known +it, that I had taken away the tureen and the plates. Should you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, indeed, I do notice it every day of my life,” she declared. +</p> + +<p> +Here, however, being rather uneasy at the idea of what might be +the result of <i>too</i> long an inspection, he hurried her into the +sitting-room, where the dishes were which he had just taken out, and +made known his intention of transposing, like a clever musician, this +quartett from the key of pewter into that of silver. He proposed the +selling of them, that she might be got to agree the more easily to +their being pawned. But she pulled out every stop of the feminine organ, +the clarion, the stopped diapason, flute, bird-stop, <i>vox humana</i>, and, +lastly, the tremolo stop. He might say whatever he liked; <i>she</i> said +whatever <i>she</i> liked. A man does not try to arrest the iron arm of +necessity, or to avert it; he calmly awaits its stroke; a woman tries +to struggle away from its grip, at any rate for a few hours, before it +encircles her. It was in vain that Siebenkæs quietly and simply asked +her if she knew what else was to be done. To questions of this sort, +there float up and down in women’s heads not one complete answer, but +thousands of half answers, which are supposed to amount to a whole one, +just as in the differential calculus an infinite number of straight +lines go to form a curved one. Some of these unripe, half-formed, +fugitive, mutually auxiliary answers were—— +</p> + +<p> +“He shouldn’t have changed his name, and he would have had his mother’s +money by this time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, he might borrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at all his clients, well off and comfortable, and he won’t ask +them to pay him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He never dreams of asking a fee for defending the infanticide.” +</p> + +<p> +“And he shouldn’t spend so much money.” “He needn’t have paid that +half-term’s rent in advance.” For the latter would have kept him going +for a day or two, you see! +</p> + +<p> +It is always a vain task to oppose the “minority of one” of the +complete and true answer to the immense majority of feminine partial +proofs of this sort; women know, at any rate, thus much of the law of +Switzerland, that four half or invalid witnesses outweigh one whole or +valid one.<a name="div2Ref_41" href="#div2_41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> But the best way of confuting them is, to let them say +what they have got to say, and not utter a word yourself; they’re +certain to diverge, before very long, into subsidiary or accessory +matters, which you yield to them, confuting them, as regards the real +subject of argument, simply by action. This is the only species of +confutation which they ever forgive. Siebenkæs, unfortunately, +attempted to apply the surgical bandage of philosophy to Lenette’s two +principal members, her head and her heart, and therefore commenced as +follows— +</p> + +<p> +“Dear wife, in the parish church you sing against worldly riches, like +the rest of the congregation, and yet you have them fixed on your heart +as firmly as your brooch. Now, I don’t go to a church, it’s true, but I +have a pulpit in my own breast, and I prize one single happy moment +more than the whole of this pewter dirt. Tell me truly now, has your +immortal heart been pained by the tragical fate of the soup-tureen, or +was it only your pericardium? The doctors prescribe tin, in powder, for +worms; and may not this miserable tin, which we have broken into little +pieces and swallowed, have had a similar effect on the abominable worms +of the heart? Collect yourself, and think of our cobbler here, does his +soup taste any the worse to him out of his painted iron <i>saucière</i> +because his bit of roast meat is eaten out of it too? You sit behind +that pincushion of yours, and can’t see that society is mad, and drinks +coffee, tea, and chocolate out of different cups, and has particular +kinds of plates for fruit, for salad, and for herrings, and particular +sorts of dishes for hares, fish, and poultry. And I say that it will +get madder and madder as time goes on, and order as many kinds of fruit +plates from the china shops as there are different fruits in the +gardens—at least, I should do it myself; and if I were a crown prince, +or a grand master, I should insist upon having lark dishes and lark +knives, snipe dishes and snipe knives; neither would I carve the haunch +of a stag of sixteen upon any plate I had once had a stag of eight +upon. The world is a fine madhouse, and one gets up and preaches his +false doctrine in it when another has done, just as they do in a Quaker +meeting. So the Bedlamites think that only two follies are veritable +follies, follies which are past, and follies which are yet to come—old +follies and new; but I would show them that theirs partake of the +nature of both.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette’s only reply was an inexpressibly <i>gentle</i> request: “Oh! +please, Firmian, do <i>not</i> sell the pewter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, then, I shan’t!” (he answered, with a bitter satirical joy +at having got the brilliant neck of the pigeon fairly into the noose +which he had so long had ready baited for it). “The emperor Antoninus +sent his real silver plate to the mint, so that I might surely send +mine; but just as you like: I don’t care twopence. Not an ounce of it +shall be old; I shall merely pawn! I’m much obliged to you for the +suggestion; and if I only hit the eagle’s tail on St. Andrew’s Day, or +the imperial globe, I can redeem the whole of it in a minute—I mean +with the money of the prize; at all events, the salad-bowl and the +soup-tureen. I think you’re quite right. Old Sabel’s in the house, is +she not? She can take the things and bring back the money.” +</p> + +<p> +She let it be so now. The shooting-match on St. Andrew’s Day was her +Fortunatus’s wishing-cap, the wooden wings of the eagle were as waxen +flying-apparatus fixed on to her hopes, the powder and shot were the +flower-seeds of her future blossoms of peace (as they are to crowned +heads also). Thou poor soul, in many senses of the word! But the poor +hope incredibly more than the rich; therefore it is that poor devils +are more apt to catch the infection of lotteries than the rich—just as +they are to catch the plague and other epidemics. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs—who looked down with contempt not only on the loss of his +household goods, but on the loss of his money—was secretly resolved +to leave the trash at the pawnbroker’s, unredeemed for ever, like +a state-bond, even though he should chance to be king (at the +shooting-match), and convert the transaction into a regular sale some +future day, when he happened to be passing the shop. +</p> + +<p> +After a few bright quiet days Peltzstiefel came again to make an +evening call. Amid the manifold embargoes laid upon their supplies, the +risks attending their smuggling operations, and as a tear or a sigh was +laid as a tax which <i>must</i> necessarily be paid upon every loaf of +bread, Firmian had had no time, to say nothing of inclination, to +remember his jealousy. In Lenette’s case, matters were necessarily +exactly reversed; and if she really has any love for Stiefel, it must +grow faster on his money-dunghill than on the advocate’s field all over +wells of hunger. The Schulrath’s eye was not one of those which read +the troubles of a household in a minute, though they are masked by +smiling faces; he noticed nothing of the kind. And for that very reason +it came to pass that this friendly trio spent a happy hour free from +clouds, during which, though the sun of happiness did not shine, yet +the moon of happiness (hope and memory) rose shimmering in their sky. +Moreover, Siebenkæs had the enjoyment of being provided with a +cultivated listener, who could follow and appreciate the jingle of the +bells on the jester’s cap, the trumpet fanfares of his Leibgeberish +sallies. Lenette could neither follow nor appreciate them in the very +least, and even Peltzstiefel didn’t understand him when he <i>read</i> him, +but only when he <i>heard him talk</i>. The two men at first talked only of +persons, not of things, as women do; only that they called their +chronique scandaleuse by the name of History of Literature and Men of +Letters. For literary men like to know every little trait and +peculiarity of a great author—what clothes he wears, and what his +favourite dishes are. For similar reasons, women minutely observe every +little trait and peculiarity of any crown princess who happens to pass +through the town, even to her ribbons and fringes. From literary men +they passed to scholarship; and then all the clouds of this life melted +away, and in the land of learning, the fair realm of science, the +downcast sorrowful head, wrapped and veiled in the black Lenten +altar-cloth of hardship and privation, is lifted up once more. The soul +inhales the mountain air of its native land, and looks down from the +lofty peak of Pindus upon its poor bruised and wounded body lying +beneath—that body which it has to drag and bear about, sighing +under its weight. When some dunned, needy scholar, some skin-and-bone +reading-master, a poor curate with five children, or a baited and +badgered tutor, is lying woeful and wretched—every nerve quivering +under some instrument of torture—and a brother of his craft, plagued +by just as many instruments of torture as himself, comes and argues and +philosophises with him a whole evening, and tells him all the latest +opinions of the literary papers, then truly the sand-glass which marks +the hours of the torture<a name="div2Ref_42" href="#div2_42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> is laid on its side—Orpheus comes, all +bright and shining, with the lyre of knowledge in his hand, into the +psychic hell of the two brethren in office, the sad tears vanish from +their brightening eyes, the snakes of the furies twine into graceful +curls, the Ixion’s wheel rolls harmoniously to the lyre, and these two +poor Sisyphuses sit resting quietly on their stones and listen to the +music. But the poor curate’s, the reading-master’s, the scholar’s, good +wife, what is her comfort in her misery? She has none except her +husband, who ought, therefore, to be very tender to all her +shortcomings. +</p> + +<p> +The reader was made aware in the first book that Leibgeber had sent +three programmes from Bayreuth. Stiefel brought the one, by Dr. Frank, +with him, and asked Siebenkæs to write a notice of it for the +‘Kuhschnappel Heavenly Messenger.’ He also took out of his pocket +another little book, to receive its sentence. The reader will hail both +these works with gladness, seeing that my hero and his has no money in +the house, and will be able to live for a day or two by reviewing them. +The second manuscript, which was in a roll, was entitled: ‘Lessingii, +Emilia Galotti. Pro gymnasmatis loco latine reddita et publice acta, +moderante J. H. Steffens. Cellis 1788.’ +</p> + +<p> +It seems that a good many of the subscribers to the ‘Heavenly +Messenger’ have complained of the length of time which elapsed before +this work was noticed, drawing disadvantageous comparisons between the +‘Messenger’ and the ‘Universal German Library;’ for the latter, +notwithstanding the greatness of its universal German circulation, +notices good works within a few years of their birth—sometimes even as +early as the third year of their existence—so that the favourable +notice can frequently be bound up with the work, the first paper-covers +of it not being worn out before. The reason, however, why the ‘Heavenly +Messenger’ did not, and in fact could not, review more of the books of +the year 1788, was, that it was not until five years after that date +that it—first saw the light itself. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you think,” said Siebenkæs, in a friendly manner to +Peltzstiefel, “that if I’m going to write proper notices of Messrs. +Frank and Steffens here, my wife should take care not to make a +thundering noise, swishing away with her broom at my back?” +</p> + +<p> +“That might really be a matter of very considerable importance,” said +Stiefel, gravely. Upon which a playful and somewhat abridged report of +the proceedings in the household action of inhibition was laid before +him. Wendeline fixed her kindly eyes on Peltzstiefel’s face, striving +to read the <i>Rubrum</i> (the red title), and the <i>Nigrum</i> (the black body +matter) of his judgment there before it was pronounced. Both colours +were there. But though Stiefel’s bosom heaved with genuine sighs of the +deepest affection for her, he nevertheless addressed her as follows— +</p> + +<p> +“Madame Siebenkæs, this really won’t do at all; for God hath not +created anything nobler than a scholar sitting at his writing. Hundreds +of thousands of people, ten times told, are sitting in every quarter of +the globe, as if on school-forms before him, and to all of these he has +to speak. Errors held by the wisest and cleverest people he has to +eradicate: ages, long since gone to dust and passed away, with those +who lived in them, he has to describe with accuracy and minuteness; +systems, the most profound and the most complex, he has to confute and +overthrow, or otherwise to invent and establish, himself. His light has +to pierce through massy crowns, through the Pope’s triple tiara, +through Capuchin hoods and through wreaths of laurel—to pierce them +all and enlighten the brains within. This is his work; and this work he +can perform. But Madame Siebenkæs, what a strain on his faculties! What +a grand sustained effort is necessary! It is a hard matter and a +difficult to set up a book in type, but harder still to write it! Think +what the strain must have been when Pindar wrote, and Homer, earlier +still—I mean in the ‘Iliad’—and so with one after another, down to +our own day. Is it any wonder, then, that great writers, in the +terrible strain and absorption of all their ideas, have often scarcely +known where they were, what they were doing, or what they would be at; +that they were blind and dumb, and insensible to everything but what +was perceived by the <i>five interior spiritual senses</i>, like blind +people, who see beautifully in their dreams, but in their waking state +are, as we have said, blind! This state of absorbedness and strain it +is which I consider to explain how it was that Socrates and Archimedes +could stand and be completely unconscious of the storm and turmoil +going on around them; how Cardanus in the profundity of his meditation +was unconscious of his Chiragra; others of the gout; one Frenchman of a +great conflagration, and a second Frenchman of the death of his wife.” +</p> + +<p> +“There, you see,” said Lenette, much delighted, in a low voice to her +husband, “how can a learned gentleman possibly hear his wife when she’s +at her washing and scrubbing?” +</p> + +<p> +Stiefel, unmoved, went on with the thread of his argument: “Now, a fire +of this description can only be kindled in absolute and uninterrupted +calm. And this is the reason why all the great artists and men of +letters in Paris live nowhere but in the Rue Ste. Victoire; the other +streets are all too noisy. And it is hence that no smiths, tinkers, or +tinmen, are allowed to work in the street where a professor lives.” +</p> + +<p> +“No <span class="sc2">TINMEN</span> especially,” added Siebenkæs, very gravely. “It should +always be remembered that the mind cannot entertain more than +half-a-dozen of ideas at a time; so that if the idea of noise should +make its appearance as a wicked seventh, of course some one or other of +the previous ideas, which might otherwise have been followed up or +written down, takes its departure from the head altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +Indeed Stiefel made Lenette give him her hand as a pledge that she +would always stand still, like Joshua’s sun, while Firmian was smiting +the foe with pen and scourge. +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t I often asked the bookbinder myself,” she said, “not to hammer +so hard upon his books, because my husband would hear him when he was +making <i>his</i>.” However, she gave the Schulrath her hand, and he went +away contented with their contentment, leaving them quite hopeful of +quieter times. +</p> + +<p> +But, ye dear souls, of how little use to you is this state of peace, +seeing ye are on half-pay and starving in this cold, empty, orphan +hospital of an earth—how little will it help you in these dim +labyrinthian wanderings of your destiny, of which even the Ariadne +clue-threads all turn to nets and snares? How long will the poor’s +advocate manage to live on the produce of the pawned pewter, and on the +price of the two reviews which he is going to write? Only, we are all +like the Adam of the epic, and take our first night to be the day of +judgment, and the setting of the sun for the end of the world. We +sorrow for our friends, just as if there were no brighter future +<span class="sc2">YONDER</span>, and we sorrow for ourselves as if there were no brighter future +<span class="sc2">HERE</span>. For all our passions are born Atheists and unbelievers. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch06"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">MATRIMONIAL JARS—EXTRA LEAFLET ON THE LOQUACITY OF WOMEN—MORE +PLEDGING—THE MORTAR AND THE SNUFF-MILL—A SCHOLAR’S KISS—ON +THE CONSOLATIONS OF HUMANITY—CONTINUATION OF THE SIXTH CHAPTER. +</p> + +<p> +This chapter commences at once with pecuniary difficulties. The +wretched, leaky Danaid’s bucket which our good couple had to use for +washing their groschen or two, their grains of gold-dust—few and far +between as they were—out of the sands of their Pactolus, had always +run dry again in the course of a couple of days, or of three at the +outside. On this occasion, however, they had something certain to go +upon, namely, the reviews of the two works; they could count upon four +florins certainly, if not upon five. +</p> + +<p> +Early next day, after his morning kiss, Firmian seated himself upon his +critical judgment-bench again, and proceeded to pass his sentences. He +might have written an epic poem, so light were the trade-winds which +had hitherto been prevalent during the early hours of the day. From +eight o’clock in the morning till eleven in the forenoon, he was +engaged in holding up to the world in a favourable light the programme +of Dr. Frank of Pavia, which was entitled: ‘Sermo Academicus de civis +medici in republica conditione atque officiis, ex lege præipue erutis. +Auct. Frank. 1785.’ He criticised, praised, blamed, and made extracts +from this little production, till he thought he had covered enough +paper to earn what would suffice to redeem the pawned herring-dish, +salad-bowl, sauce-boat, and plates—his views on the work occupying one +sheet, four pages, and fifteen lines. +</p> + +<p> +The morning had passed so pleasantly, in holding Vehmgericht in this +manner, that he thought he might as well go on, and hold another in the +afternoon on the other book. He had never ventured upon this before; in +the afternoons he had done advocate’s work, not reviewer’s, appearing +in the character of defendant (<i>maker</i> of defence), not of fiscal +(prosecutor). He had ample reason for this, seeing that every afternoon +girls and maid-servants came with bonnets and caps, and with <i>mouths</i> +full of conversational treasures, which they at once unpacked; richer +in language than the Arabs, who have only a thousand <i>words</i> to express +the same idea, these young women had a thousand <i>idioms</i> for it, or +different ways of putting it;—and, as an organ when it’s out of order, +immediately begins to cipher on twenty of its pipes or so at a time as +soon as you begin to work the bellows, though no notes may be pressed +down, so would they the moment the bellows of their lungs was set +a-going. He didn’t mind this, however, seeing that at the particular +hours to which these feminine alarum clocks were set, he let his own +juristical alarum go rattling off too, and during the arguing of +Lenette’s cases, went on with the arguing of his. He wasn’t disturbed +by this; he maintained: “A lawyer is not to be put out, he can open and +close his sentences when he chooses—his periods are long tapeworms, +and can be lengthened or cut down with impunity—for each segment of +them is itself a worm, each comma a period.” +</p> + +<p> +But reviewing was another matter, and couldn’t be done so well. At the +same time, I shall here faithfully transcribe for the benefit of the +unlearned (the learned have read the review long ago), so much as he +actually did manage to get done after his dinner. He wrote down the +title of Steffen’s Latin translation of “Emilia Galotti,” and proceeded +as follows— +</p> + +<p> +“This translation meets a want which we have long experienced. It is, +indeed, a striking phenomenon, that so few of the German classics have +as yet been translated into Latin for the use of scholars, who, for +their part, have supplied us with German versions of nearly all the +Greek and Roman classic authors. The German nation can point to +literary productions of its own which are quite worthy of perusal by +scholars and by linguists, who, although they can translate them, do +not understand them, because they are not written in Latin. +Lichtenberg’s ‘Pocket Calendar’ has appeared simultaneously in a German +edition—for the English, who are studying German—and in a French for +our own <i>haute noblesse</i>. But why should not German original works, and +even the very ‘Calendar’ itself, be made known to linguists and to +scholars by means of a good and faithful Latin translation? There can +be no doubt that they would be the very first to be struck by the great +resemblance which may be traced between the odes of Ramler and those of +Horace, if the former were but translated. The reviewer must confess +that it has always been matter of surprise, as well as regret, to him +that but two correct editions of Klopstock’s ‘Messiah’ have as yet +appeared, the original edition and his own—and that there is no Latin +edition of it for scholars—(Lessing having scarcely translated the +‘Invocation’ in his miscellaneous writings)—nor one in the curial +style for lawyers, nor a plain prose one for the commercial world, nor +one in Jew-German for the Jewish community.” +</p> + +<p> +When he had got thus far, he was compelled to stop, because a housemaid +<i>wouldn’t</i> stop, but went on reiterating what her mistress had gone on +re-iterating, namely, how her night-cap was to be done up; twenty times +did she sketch the ground-plan and elevation of the said cap, and laid +weight on the necessity for speedy execution. Lenette answered her +tautologies with equivalent ones, paying her back to the full in her +own coin. Scarce was the housemaid out at the door, when the reviewer +said— +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t written a word while that windmill was clacking. Lenette, +tell me, is it really a positive impossibility for a woman to say, +‘It’s four o’clock,’ instead of ‘The four quarters to four have gone?’ +Can no woman say, ‘The head-clout will be ready to-morrow,’ and then an +end of the matter? Can no woman say, ‘I want a dollar for it,’ and +there an end of the story? Nor, ‘Run in again to-morrow!’ and no more +about it? Can <i>you</i> not do it, for instance?” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette answered very coldly, “Oh! of course you think everybody thinks +just as you think yourself!” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette had two feminine bad habits, which have sent millions of male +rockets, or pyrotechnic serpents—namely, curses—up skywards. The +first was, that whenever she gave the servant an order, she did it as +if it were a memorial in two copies, and then went out of the room with +her and repeated the order in question three or four times more in the +passage. The second was, that let Siebenkæs shout a thing to her, as +distinctly as man could, her first answer was, “What?” or, “What do you +say?” Now, I not only advise ladies always to demand a “second of +exchange” of this sort when they are in any embarrassment for an +answer, and I laud them for so doing; but in cases where what is +required of them is attention, not the truth, this <i>ancora</i> and <i>bis</i> +which they cry to a speaker who is anxious not to waste time, is as +cumbersome as it is unnecessary. Matters of this kind are trifles in +married life only so long as the sufferer by them does not complain of +them. But when they have been found fault with they are worse than +deadly sins, and felonies, and adulteries—seeing that they occur much +more frequently. +</p> + +<p> +If the author were disturbed at his work by pleonasms of the above +description; what he would do would be, not deliver a serious lecture, +but (because this is a good opportunity) write the following +</p> + +<p class="center"> +EXTRA LEAFLET ON FEMALE LOQUACITY. +</p> + +<p> +“The author of the work on ‘Marriage’ has said, ‘A woman who does not +talk is a stupid woman.’ But it is easier to be his encomiast than his +disciple. The cleverest women are often silent with women, and the most +stupid and most silent are often both with men. On the whole, this +statement, which has been applied to the male sex, is true also of the +female, namely, that those who think most have least to say; as frogs +cease croaking when a light is brought to the side of their pond. +Moreover, the extreme talkativeness of women is a result of the +sedentary nature of their occupations. Men, whose work is sedentary, +such as tailors, shoemakers, weavers, have in common with women not +only their hypochondriac fancies, but also their loquacity. +</p> + +<p> +“The little work-tables, where feminine fingers are employed, are also +the playgrounds of the feminine imagination, and their needles become +little magic wands, wherewith they transform their rooms into isles of +spirits filled with dreams. Hence it is that a letter or a book +distracts a woman who is in love more than the knitting of a whole pair +of stockings. Savages say that the monkeys refrain from talking that +they may not be made to work; but many a woman talks twice as much when +she is working as when she is not. +</p> + +<p> +“I have devoted much thought to the question, what purpose this +peculiarity subserves in the economy of the universe. At first it might +strike us that Nature has ordained these re-iterations of that which +has been already said with a view to the development of metaphysical +truths: for, as demonstration, according to Jacobi and Kant, is merely +a series, or progression, of identical propositions, it is evident that +women, who always proceed from the same thing to the same thing, are +continually demonstrating. There can be no doubt, however, that the +object which Nature has chiefly had in view is the following. Accurate +observers of nature have pointed out that the reason why the leaves of +trees keep up their constant fluttering motion is that the atmosphere +may be purified by this perpetual flagellation—this oscillation of the +leaves having very much the effect of a light and gentle breeze.<a name="div2Ref_43" href="#div2_43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> It +would, however, be very wonderful had Nature—always economising her +forces, Nature, who never does anything in vain—ordained this much +longer oscillation, this seventy years’ wagging of the feminine tongue, +to no definite purpose. For the purpose in question, however, we have +not far to seek. It is the same which is subserved by the quivering of +the leaves of trees. The endless, regular, unceasing beat of the +feminine tongue is to assist in agitating and stirring up the +atmosphere, which would otherwise become putrescent. The moon has her +ocean of water, and the feminine head has its ocean of air, to stir +into salubrity and to keep in perpetual freshness. Hence a universal +Pythagorean noviciate would, sooner or later, give rise to epidemics, +and Chartreuses of nuns would become pesthouses. Hence it is that +diseases of the pestiferous type are less frequent among civilised +nations, who talk the most. And hence Nature’s beneficent arrangement +that it is exactly in the largest cities—and moreover in the +winter—and moreover indoors—and in large assemblages—that women talk +most, inasmuch as it is exactly in these places and at these periods +that the atmosphere is most impure, and charged with the largest +proportion of carbonic acid and other products of respiration, &c., +requiring to be thoroughly fanned and set in motion. And, indeed, +Nature here overthrows all artificial barriers and impediments; +for, although many European women have endeavoured to imitate +those of America—who fill their mouths with water in order to keep +silence—and, while making calls, fill theirs with tea or coffee, yet +these fluids have been found rather to facilitate than to prevent the +free flow of feminine speech. +</p> + +<p> +“I trust that in this I am far from being like the narrow-minded +teleologists, who, to every grand sun-path, or sun-orbit of Nature, +must always be appending and intercalating little subsidiary +foot-tracks and ends in view. Such persons might permit themselves the +supposition (<i>I</i> should be ashamed to do so) that the oscillation of +the female tongue, the use of which is sufficiently apparent in the +motion which it communicates to the atmosphere, may possibly serve to +give typical illustration to some thought or idea of a spiritual +nature—<i>e. g</i>. the female soul itself, perhaps. +</p> + +<p> +“This belongs to that class of things with respect to which Kant has +said that they can neither be proved nor disproved. I myself should +rather incline, however, to the opinion that the talking of women is an +indication of the cessation of thought and mental activity—as in a +good mill the warning bell only rings when there is no corn left in the +hopper. Moreover, every husband knows that tongues are attached to +women’s heads in order to give due notice, by their clanging, that some +contradiction, something irregular or impossible, is dominating in +them.<a name="div2Ref_44" href="#div2_44"><sup>[44]</sup></a> Similarly, H. Müller’s calculating machine has a little bell +in it, which rings merely to give notice that some error has occurred +in a calculation. However, it now remains for the natural philosopher +to prosecute this inquiry, and to determine to what extent my views may +prove to be erroneous.” +</p> + +<p> +I may just mention that the above leaflet was written by the advocate. +</p> + +<p> +He did not finish his review till the following morning. He had +intended to go on writing down his ideas on the subject of the +translation of Emilia Galotti till the money coming to him as the price +of the ideas should be enough to pay for new toes to his boots—Fecht +asked a sheet and a half for doing the pair—but he had not time for +this, as he was obliged to calculate the price of his notice by the +compositor’s sight-rule, and get the money for it that very day. +</p> + +<p> +The reviews were sent to the editor; the critical invoice amounted to +three florins four groschen and five pfennige. Strange! we smile when +we see the spiritual and the corporeal, intellect and hard cash, pain +and pecuniary compensation, stated as sums in proportion; but is not +our whole life an equation, a sum in “partnership” between soul and +body; and is not all action <i>upon</i> us corporeal, and all <i>re</i>action +<i>from</i> us spiritual? +</p> + +<p> +The servant-girl brought back only “kind regards;” not the leaves of +silver which his ink should have crystallised into. Peltzstiefel had +not given the matter a thought. He was so absorbed in his studies +that he was indifferent to his own money, and blind to the poverty of +other people. He was capable, indeed, of noticing a <i>hiatus</i>; but it +must be in a manuscript—not in his own or other people’s shoes, +stockings, &c. An inward fire blinded this fortunate man to the +phosphorescence of the rotten wood around him. And happy is every actor +in the school-theatricals of life who finds the lofty inward delusion +suffice to compensate him for the delusions without, or to hide them +from his view;—who is so carried away by the enthusiasm with which he +enters into and renders his spiritual <i>rôle</i>, that the coarse daubs of +landscapes of the scenery seem to bloom, and the branches to rustle in +the refreshing showers (of peas) from the rain-box—and who does not +wake to reality at the shifting of the scenes. +</p> + +<p> +But this beautiful blindness of the Rath was very distressing to our +two dear friends; their little constellation, which was to have shone +in their evening sky, fell all down in meteoric drops upon the earth. I +do not blame Stiefel; he had an ear for distress, though not an eye. +But ye rich and great ones of the earth, who, helpless in the +honeycombs of your pleasures, swimming with clogged wings in your +melted sugar of roses, do not find it an easy matter to move your hand, +put it into your money-bag, and take out the wage of him who helped to +fill your honey-cells—an hour of judgment will strike at last for +<i>you</i>, and ask you if ye were worthy to <i>live</i>, let alone to live a +life of pleasure, when ye avoid even the <i>trifling</i> trouble of <i>paying</i> +the poor who have undergone the <i>immense</i> trouble of <i>earning</i>. But ye +would be better if ye thought what misery your comfortable, indolent, +indisposition to open a purse, or to read a little account, often +inflicts upon the poor; if ye pictured to yourselves the backward start +of hopeless disappointment of some poor woman whose husband comes home +without his money—the starvation, the obliteration of so many hopes, +and the weary sorrowful days of a whole family. +</p> + +<p> +The advocate, therefore, put on his wicked silverising face again and +went prying about into every corner with his eyeglass, making himself +into a species of pressgang of the furniture. As a king or an English +minister sits up in his bed at night, rests his head on his hand, and +considers what commodity or what tree-stem full of birch-sap he may +stick his winetap of a new tax into, or (in another metaphor) so cut +the peat of taxation that new peat may grow in its place: thus did +Siebenkæs. With his letter of marque in his hand he scanned minutely +every flag that hove in sight; he lifted up his shaving-dish and set it +down; he shook the paralytic arms of an old chair till they cracked +again—he subjected it to a trial more severe, by sitting down in it +and getting up again.—I interrupt my period to observe <i>en passant</i> +that Lenette fully understood the danger of this conscription and +measuring of the children of the land, and that she protested +continuously and unavailingly against this game of pledges with +Job-like lamentations.—He also took down from its hook an old yellow +mirror, with a gilt leaf-pattern frame, which hung in the bedroom +opposite the green-railed bed, examined its wooden case and the back of +it, moved the glass of it up and down a little and then hung it up +again—an old firedog and some bedroom crockery he did not touch; he +whipt the lid off a porcelain butter-boat, made, according to the +plastic art of the period, in the shape of a cow, and glanced into the +inside of it, but set it back, empty and full of dust, as an ornament +on the mantelpiece again; he weighed, longer and with both hands, a +spice-mortar, and put it back again into the cupboard. +</p> + +<p> +He looked more and more dangerous, and more and more merry; he drew out +with both arms the drawer of a wardrobe, shoved back table-napkins, and +begun to overhaul a mourning-dress of checked cotton a little ——. But +here Lenette flew out, seized him by his overhauling arm, and cried, +“Why not, indeed! But, please God, it shall <i>not</i> come to <i>that</i> with +<i>me</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +He shut the drawer quietly, opened the cupboard again, and carefully +lifted the mortar on to the table, saying, “Oh! very well, it matters +little to me, it comes all to the same thing; the mortar will have to +take its departure.” By covering this bell of shame with his open hand +by way of a damper, he was able to take out the pestle, its clapper, +without producing any ring or clang. He had been perfectly aware all +the time that she would rather pawn the garment of her soul (<i>i. e</i>. +her body) than the checked garment of that garment; but it was of set +purpose that, like the Court of Rome, he demanded the entire hand that +he might be the more likely to obtain a single finger of it—in this +case the mortar—and moreover he hoped the mere frequency with which he +reiterated his determination would save him the necessity of stating +any reasons, and that he would familiarise Lenette with the bugbear and +hobgoblin by keeping it continually before her eyes (I mean, with his +design upon the mortar). Wherefore he went on to say, “The fact is, +that it’s very little that we have to pound in the course of a +twelvemonth, except when we have a quarter of a fat beast; at the same +time, just give me some idea why you’re so anxious to keep the checked +gown—what on earth is the use of it? The only time you can wear it +will be when I depart this life. Now, Lenette, that’s a terrible sort +of idea; I can’t stand it. Coin the dress into silver—eliminate it +altogether; I’ll send two pairs of mourning-buckles of mine along with +it; I hope I may never have anything to buckle with them again.” +</p> + +<p> +She stormed without bounds and preached with much wisdom against all +“careless, thoughtless householders;” and this for the very reason, +that she felt it was only too probable that he would soon take every +article of furniture in the place (which he had been feeling and +valuing, like a person buying bullocks) to the slaughter-house, +and—goodness gracious! the checked dress among the rest. “I had rather +starve,” she cried, “than throw away that mortar for a mere song. The +Schulrath is sure to be here to-morrow evening, with the money for your +reviews.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now you begin to talk sense,” said he; and he carried the pestle +horizontally in both his hands into the bedroom, and laid it on to +Lenette’s pillow—next bringing the mortar, and placing it on his own. +“If people should happen to hear it ring,” he said, “they would think I +wanted to turn it into silver, as we were pounding nothing in it; and I +shouldn’t like that.” +</p> + +<p> +The united capital contained in his greenish-yellow cotton-purse, and +her large money-bag (which she wore at her girdle), amounted to about +three groschen, good money. In the evening there would have to be a +groschen-loaf bought, for cash, and the remainder of the metallic-seed +must be sown in the morning to grow the breakfast- and dinner-crop. The +servant-girl went out for the bread, but came back with the groschen +and with the Job’s message, “There’s nothing left at the bakers’ shops +at this time of night but two-groschen loaves; father (the cobbler +Fecht) couldn’t get any either.” This was lucky; the advocate could +enter into partnership with the shoemaker, and it would be easy for +these partners, by each contributing a groschen to the partnership +funds, to obtain a two-groschen loaf. The Fechts were asked if they +agreed to this. The cobbler, who made no secret of his daily +bankruptcies, answered— +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart. G—d d—n me! (Heaven forgive me for swearing) if I +and the whole crew of young tatterdemalions in the place have had a +scrap of anything to fill our mouths with the whole blessed day but +waxed-ends.” In short, this coalition of the <i>tiers état</i> with the +learned estates put an end to the famine, and the covenanting parties +broke the loaf in two and weighed it in a just balance, it being itself +both the weight and the thing weighed. Ah! ye rich! Ye, with your +manna, or bread sent from heaven, little think how indispensable to +poverty are small weights, apothecaries’ measure, heller-loaves,<a name="div2Ref_45" href="#div2_45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> a +dinner for eight kreuzers (and your shirt washed into the bargain); and +a broken-bread shop, where mere crumbs and black-bread powder are +to be had for money; and how the comfort of a whole family’s evening +depends on the fact that your hundredweights are on sale in lots of +half-an-ounce. +</p> + +<p> +They ate, and were content. Lenette was in good humour because she had +gained her point. At night the advocate put the things which were to be +pawned upon a soft chair. In the morning she facilitated his writing by +keeping very quiet. It was a good omen, however, that she did not put +the mortar back into the cupboard. And Siebenkæs fired off various +queries out of the said bomb-mortar in parabolic curves. He knew +perfectly well that the Loretto- and Harmonica-bell in question must +march that day or the next over the frontier for a small pecuniary +<i>Abzug-geld</i>.<a name="div2Ref_46" href="#div2_46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> Women always like to put everything off till the very +last possible moment. +</p> + +<p> +Peltzstiefel came in that evening. It was both ridiculous and natural +to expect that the first thing the editor of the ‘Heavenly Messenger’ +would do would be to pay the critic his wages, so that he might at +least be able to set before his editor a candlestick with a candle in +it, and a beer-glass containing beer. Nothing can be more cruel than an +anxiety of this sort, because this kind of shame breaks in a moment all +the springs in the human machine. Siebenkæs wouldn’t let it trouble his +head, because he knew Stiefel wouldn’t let it trouble his. But Lenette +was to be pitied, inasmuch as the blushes of her shame were heightened +by her fondness for Stiefel! At last the Rath put his hand in his +pocket. They thought now he was going to produce the review-money; but +all he took out was his snuff-machine, his tobacco-grater, and he dived +back into his coat-tail pocket for half-an-ounce of rappee to put upon +this little chopping-bench. But he had grated the half-ounce already. +He searched his breeches-pockets for money to send for another +half-ounce. Truly—and here he swore an oath for which he would have +incurred a fine had he been in England—he had sent, like an ass, not +only his purse but also the money for the reviews, carefully counted +out and neatly wrapped in paper, with his breeches—they were his plush +ones—to the tailor’s. He said it wasn’t the first time, and it was a +lucky job that the tailor was an honest man; the only thing was, he +hadn’t noticed how much there was in his purse. He innocently requested +Lenette to “send and get him an ounce of rappee; he would repay her +next morning, when he sent the money for the reviews.” Siebenkæs +roguishly added, “And send for some beer at the same time, dear.” He +and Stiefel looked out of window; but he saw that his poor wife—her +bosom torn with sighs, and suffering <i>peine forte et dure</i>—stole into +the bedroom and noiselessly put the spice-mill into her apron. +</p> + +<p> +After a good half-hour, rappee, beer, money, and happiness entered the +room; the bell-metal of the mortar was transformed into sustenance for +the inward man, and the bell in question had been somewhat like the +little altar-bell, which in this case, besides <i>announcing</i> a +transubstantiation, or transformation of the substance of the bread, as +it does in the Roman Catholic Church, had <i>undergone</i> one itself. Their +blood no longer gurgled among rocks and stones, but flowed softly and +tranquilly along, by meadows, and over silver sands. Such is man. When +he is in the depths of misery, the first happy moment lifts him out; +when he is at the height of bliss, the remotest sorrowful moment, +even though it is down beneath the horizon, casts him to earth. +No great man, who has <i>maîtres de cuisine</i>, clerks of the cellar, +capon-stuffers, and confectioners, has any true enjoyment of the +pleasure it is to give and receive hospitality; he gets and gives no +thanks. But a poor man and his poor guest, with whom he halves his loaf +and his can, are united by a mutual bond of gratitude. +</p> + +<p> +The evening wound a soft bandage about the pain of the morning. The +poppy-juice of sixty drops of happiness was taken hourly, and the +medicine had a gently soothing and exhilarating power. When his old, +kind friend was leaving, Siebenkæs gave him a hearty, grateful kiss for +his cheering visit, Lenette standing by, with the candle in her hand. +Her husband, as some little compensation to her for having pounded her +little fit of obstinacy to groats in the mortar, said to her in an +off-hand, cheerful manner, “You give him one, too.” The blushes +mantled on her cheeks like fire, and she leant back, as if she had a +mouth to avoid already. It was quite clear that, if she had not been +obliged to perform the office of torch-bearer, she would have fled to +her room on the spot. The Rath stood before her beaming with +affectionate friendliness—something like a white winter-landscape in +sunshine—waiting till—she should give him the kiss. The fruitlessness +of this expectation, and the prematureness of her bending her head out +of the way, began to vex him a little at last. Somewhat hurt, but still +beaming as affectionately as ever, he said— +</p> + +<p> +“Am I not worth a kiss, Madam Siebenkæs?” +</p> + +<p> +Her husband said, “Surely you don’t expect my wife to <i>give</i> you the +kiss. She would set her hair and everything in a blaze with the +candle!” +</p> + +<p> +Upon this, Peltzstiefel inclined his head slowly and cautiously, and at +the same time commandingly, down to her mouth, and laid his warm lips +on hers, like the half of a stick of melted sealing-wax on the other +half. Lenette gave him more space, by bending back her head; yet it +must be said that while she held her left arm with the candle high up +in the air, for fear of fire, she did a good deal to push away the +Rath—another, more proximate, fire—politely with the other. When he +was gone, she was still just the least bit embarrassed. She moved about +with a certain floating motion, as though some great happiness was +buoying her up with its wings—the evening red was still bright on her +cheek, though the moon was high in the heavens: her eyes were bright, +but dreamy, seeming to notice nothing about her—her smiles came before +her words, and she spake very few—not the slightest allusion was made +to the mortar. She touched everything more gently, and looked out of +the window at the sky two or three times. She didn’t seem to care to +eat more of the two-groschen loaf, and drank no beer, but only a glass +or two of water. Anybody else—myself for example—would have held up +his finger and sworn he was looking upon a girl who had just had a +first kiss from her sweetheart. +</p> + +<p> +And I shouldn’t have regretted having taken that oath had I seen the +sudden blush which suffused her face next day when the money for the +reviews and the snuff was brought. It was a miracle, and an +extraordinary piece of politeness, that Peltzstiefel should not have +forgotten about his having contracted this little loan—little debts of +two or three groschen always escaped his preoccupied memory. But rich +people, who always carry less money about them than the poor, and +therefore borrow from them, ought to inscribe trifling debts of this +sort on a memorial tablet, in their brain, because it is very wrong to +break into a poor devil’s purse, who gets, moreover, no thanks for +these groschen of his which thus drop into the stream of Lethe. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Now, I beg to say, I should be happy to give two sheets of this +manuscript if the day of the shooting-match were but come, solely +because our dear couple build so upon it and upon its bird-pole. For +the position of these people is really going on from bad to worse; the +days of their destiny move with those of the calendar, from October on +to November, that is to say, from the end of summer to the beginning of +winter, and they find that moral frosts and nights get harder and +longer in the same ratio with those of the season. However, I must go +regularly on with my story. +</p> + +<p> +I think there is no doubt that November, the month which is such a +<i>Novembriseur</i> of the British, is the most horrible month of all the +year—for me it is a regular <i>Septembriseur</i>. I wish I could hybernate, +sleep, till the beginning of the Christmas month, December. The +November of ’85 had, at the commencement of its reign, a dreadful +wheezing breath, a hand as cold as death, and an unpleasant lachrymal +fistula; in fact it was unendurable. The northeast wind, which in +summer it is so pleasant to hear blowing past one’s ears, because one +knows it is a sure sign of settled weather, is, in autumn, only a sign +of steady cold. To our couple the weathercock was really a funeral +standard. Though they didn’t exactly go out to the woods themselves +with baskets and barrows to pick up fallen branches and twigs, like the +poor day-labourer, they had to buy the stuff for firewood from the +wood-gatherers, by weight, as if it had been wood from the Indies, and +it had to be dried by the combustion of other wood before it would +burn. But this damp cold weather was more trying to the advocate’s +stoicism, after all, than even to his purse; he couldn’t run out and go +up a hill, and look about him, and seek in the heavens for that which +consoles and comforts the anxious and sorrowful, that which dissipates +the clouds which shroud our life, and shows us guiding nebulæ +(Magellan’s clouds), if nothing else, gleaming through the fog-banks. +For when he could go up the Rabenstein, or some other hill, he could +get sight from thence of the aurora of the sun of happiness, though +that sun was under his horizon; the sorrows and torments of this +earthly life lay, writhing, like other vipers, in the clefts and +hollows beneath him, and no rattlesnake could rear itself with its +fangs up to his hill. Ah! there, in the free air, close to the ocean of +life which stretches on into the invisible distance of infinity, near +to the lofty heavens, the blue coal smoke of the stifling, suffocating +dwelling of our daily life cannot rise to us, we see its wreaths +hanging far down beneath; our sorrows drop, like leeches, from our +bleeding bosoms, and raised, for the time, above our woes, we stretch +our arms—no fetters on them now, though sore and marked, and bruised +with the galling iron—we stretch them out as if to soar in the pure +bright æther; we stretch them out, and fain would take to our bosom the +peaceful universe above us, we stretch them to the invisible eternal +Father, like children hastening home to Him—and we open them wider yet +to clasp our visible mother, created Nature, crying, “Oh take not this +solace, this comfort, away from me, when I am down there again among +the fog and the sorrow.” And why is it that prisoners and the sick are +so wretched in their confinement? They are there shut up in their +holes, the clouds sail over them, they can only see the mountains far +away in the distance, these mountains whence, as from those of the +Polar regions in summer midnights, the sun, down below the horizon, can +be seen shining with a mild face, as if in slumber. But in this +wretched weather though Siebenkæs could not enjoy the consolations of +imagination, which bloom beneath the open sky, he could derive comfort +from reason, which thrives in the flower-pots of the window-sills. His +chief consolation, which I commend to everybody, was this: Man is under +the pressure of a necessity of two kinds—an every-day necessity, +which, everybody bears uncomplainingly, and a rare, or yearly-recurrent +necessity, which is only submitted to after struggles and complaints. +The daily and everlastingly recurrent necessity is this—that corn does +not ripen in winter—that we have not got wings, though so many +lower creatures have them—or that we cannot go and stand upon the +ring-shaped craters of the lunar mountains, and looking down into the +abysses, which are miles in depth, watch the marvellous and beautiful +effects of the setting sun’s rays. The annual, or rarely recurrent, +necessity is that there is rainy weather when the corn is in +blossom—that there are a great many water-meadows of this world where +it is very bad walking, and that sometimes, because we have corns, or +no shoes, we cannot even walk anywhere. Only the annual necessity and +the daily are of exactly equal magnitude, and it is just as senseless +to murmur because we have paralysed limbs as because we have no wings. +All the <span class="sc2">PAST</span>—and this alone is the subject of our sorrow—is of so +iron a necessity that in the eyes of a superior intelligence it is just +as senseless of an apothecary to mourn because his shop is burnt to the +ground as to sigh because he can’t go botanising in the moon, although +there may be many things in the phials there which he has not got in +his. +</p> + +<p> +I mean to introduce an extra leaflet here on the consolations which we +may meet with in this damp, chilly, draughty life of ours. Anybody who +may be annoyed at these brief digressions of mine, and is scarcely to +be consoled, let him seek consolation in this— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +EXTRA LEAFLET ON CONSOLATION. +</p> + +<p> +A time may, that is to say, <i>must</i> come when it shall be held to be a +moral obligation not only to cease to torment other people, but to +cease to torment ourselves; a time must and will come when we shall +wipe away the greater part of our tears, even here on earth, were it +only from proper pride. +</p> + +<p> +It is true, nature is so constantly drawing tears from our eyes, and +forcing sighs from our breasts, that a wise man can scarcely ever +wholly lay aside his <i>body’s</i> garb of mourning; but let his soul wear +none! For if it is a simple duty or merit to endure minor sorrows with +proper cheerfulness, it is likewise a merit, only a greater one, to +bear the greatest sorrows bravely, just as the same reason which +enjoins the forgiveness of small injuries is equally valid for the +forgiveness of the greatest. +</p> + +<p> +What we have principally to contend against, and to treat with due +contempt, in sorrow, as in anger, is its paralysing poisonous +sweetness, which we are so loth to exchange for the exertion of +consoling ourselves and of exercising our reasoning faculties. +</p> + +<p> +We must not expect Philosophy to produce, with one stroke of the +pen, the converse effect to that which Rubens produced, when he +converted a smiling child into a weeping one with one stroke of his +brush. It is sufficient if she converts the soul’s deep mourning garb +into half-mourning; it is enough when I can say to myself, “I am +content to bear that share of my sorrow of which my philosophy has not +relieved me; but for her it would have been greater—the gnat’s sting +would have been a wasp’s.” +</p> + +<p> +It is only through the imagination, as from an electric condenser, that +even physical pain emits its sparks upon us. We would bear the severest +physical pains without a wince if they were not of longer duration than +a sixtieth part of a second; but we never really do have an hour of +pain to endure, but only a succession of sixtieth parts of a second of +pain, the sixty separate rays of which are concentrated into the focus +and burning-point of a second, and directed upon our nerves by the +imagination alone. The most painful part of corporeal pain is the +<i>in</i>corporeal part of it, that is to say, our own impatience, and our +delusive conviction that it will last for ever. +</p> + +<p> +We all know for certain that we shall have given up grieving for many a +loss, in twenty, ten, or two years why do we not say to ourselves, +“Very well—if this is an opinion which I shall cease to hold in twenty +years’ time,—I prefer to abandon it to-day, at once? Why must it take +me twenty years to abandon an error, when I need not hold it twenty +hours?” +</p> + +<p> +When I awake from a dream which has painted for me an Otaheite on the black +background of the night, and find the flowery land melted away, I scarcely +sigh, and I think it was but a dream. How were it if I had actually possessed +this flowery island in waking life, and it had been submerged in the sea by an +earthquake? Why should I not, <i>then</i> also, say, “The island was but a +dream”? Why am I more inconsolable for the loss of a <small>LONGER</small> +dream than for the loss of a <small>SHORTER</small> (for that is what +constitutes the distinction),—and why does man think a great loss less +necessary and less probable than a small? +</p> + +<p> +The reason is that every sentiment and every passion is a mad thing, +demanding, or building, a complete world of its own. We are capable of +being vexed because it’s past twelve o’clock, or because it’s <i>not</i> +past, but only <i>just</i> twelve o’clock. What nonsense! The passion wants +besides a personality of its own (sein eignes Ich), and a world of its +own,—a time of its own as well. I beg every one, just for once, to let +his passions speak plainly out, and to listen to them, and ascertain +what it is that they really each of them want; he will be dismayed when +he sees what monstrous things are these desires of theirs which they +have previously only half muttered. Anger would have but one neck for +all mankind, love would have but one heart, sorrow but one pair of +lachrymal ducts, and pride two bent knees! +</p> + +<p> +When I was reading in Widman’s ‘Höfer Chronik’ the account of the +fearful, bloody times of the thirty years’ war, and, as it were, lived +them over again; when I heard once more the cries for help of those +poor suffering people, all struggling in the Danube-whirlpools of their +days—and saw the beating of their hands, and their delirious +wanderings on the crumbling pillars of broken bridges, foaming billows +and drifting ice-floes dashing against them; and then, when I thought +“All these waves have gone down, the ice is melted, the howling turmoil +is all sunk to silence, so are the human beings and all their sighs”—I +was filled with a melancholy comfort, a thought of consolation for +<i>all</i> times, and I asked, “Was, and is, then, this passing, cursory, +transient burst of sorrow at the <span class="sc2">CHURCHYARD-GATE OF LIFE</span>, which three +steps into the nearest cavern could end, a fit cause for this cowardly +lamentation?” Truly if, as I believe, there be such a thing as true +patience under an eternal woe, then, verily, patience under a +transitory sorrow is hardly worth the name. +</p> + +<p> +A great but unmerited national calamity should not humble us, as the +theologians would have it—it should make us proud. When the long, +heavy sword of war falls upon mankind, and thousands of blanched hearts +are torn and bleeding—or when in the blue, pure evening sky the hot +cloud of a burning city, smoking on its funereal pyre, hangs dark and +lurid, like a cloud of ashes, the ashes of thousands of hearts and joys +all burnt to cinders and dust—then let thy spirit be lifted up in +pride, let it loathe, contemn, and despise tears, and that for which +they fall, and let it say— +</p> + +<p> +“Thou art much too small a thing, thou every-day, common life, that an +immortal being should be inconsolable with regard to <i>thee</i>, thou torn +and tattered chance-bargain of an existence. Here upon this earth—the +ashes of centuries rolled into a sphere, worked into shape and form +from vapour by convulsion—the cry of one dreaming in a sorrowful +dream—I say, it is a disgrace that the sigh should cease only when the +breast which gives it utterance is resolved into its elements, and that +the tear should cease to flow only when the eye is closed in death.” +</p> + +<p> +But moderate this thy sublime transport of indignation and put to +thyself this question, “If He, the Infinite one, who, veiled from thy +sight, sits surrounded by the gleaming abysses, without bounds save +such as Himself creates, were to lay bare to thy sight the +immeasurability of infinity, and let Himself be seen of thee as he +distributes the suns, the great spirits, the little human hearts, and +our days, and a tear or two therein; wouldst thou rise up out of thy +dust against Him, and say, ‘Almighty, be other than thou art!’” +</p> + +<p> +But there is one sorrow which will be forgiven thee, and for which +there is recompense; it is sorrow for thy dead. For this sweet sorrow +for thy lost ones is, in truth, but another form of consolation; when +we long for them, this is but a sadder way of loving them still; and +when we think of their departure we shed tears, as well as when we +picture to ourselves our happy meeting with them again. And perhaps +these tears differ not. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch06c"></a>CONTINUATION AND CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">THE CHECKED CALICO DRESS—MORE PLEDGES—CHRISTIAN NEGLECT OF THE +STUDY OF JUDAISM—A HELPING ARM (OF LEATHER) STRETCHED FORTH FROM +THE CLOUDS—THE AUCTION. +</p> + +<p> +The St. Andrew’s shooting-match will take place in the seventh +chapter: the present one fills up the wintry thorny interval up to that +period—that is to say, the wolf-month with its wolf-hunger. Siebenkæs +would at that period have been much annoyed if any one had told him +beforehand with what compassion the flourishing state of his trading +enterprises was one day to be described by me, and, as a consequence, +read by millions of persons in all time to come. He wanted no pity, and +said, “If <i>I</i> am quite happy, why should <i>you</i> be pitying me?” The +articles of household furniture which he had touched, as with the hand +of death, or notched with his axe, like trees marked for cutting, were +one by one duly felled and hauled away. The mirror, with the floral +border, in the bedroom (which, luckily for itself, could not see itself +in any other), was the first thing to be tolled out of the house by the +passing- or vesper-bell, under the pall of an apron. Before he +stationed it in the train of this dance of death, he proposed to +Lenette a substitute for it, the checked calico mourning-dress, in +order to accustom her to the idea. It was the “Censeo Carthaginem +delendam” (I vote for the destruction of Carthage) which old Cato used +to say daily in the senate after every speech. +</p> + +<p> +Next the old arm-chair was got rid of bodily (not like Shakespeare’s +arm-chair, which was weighed out by the ounce, like saffron, or in +carats, like gold), and the firedog went in company with it. Siebenkæs +had the wisdom to say, before they went away, “Censeo Carthaginem +delendam,” <i>i. e</i>. “Wouldn’t it be better to pawn the checked calico?” +</p> + +<p> +They could barely subsist for two days upon the dog and the chair. +</p> + +<p> +And then the process of alchemical transmutation of metals was applied +to the shaving-basin and the bedroom crockery, which were converted +into table-money. Of course he previously said “Censeo.” It is scarcely +worth the trouble, but I may just observe here how little fruit was +born by this branch of trade; it was rather a woody branch than a +fruit-bearing one. +</p> + +<p> +The lean porcelain cow or butter-boat would scarcely have served as +their nourishing milch cow for more than a day, if she had not been +attended by seven potentates (that is to say, most miserable prints of +them), who went “into the bargain,” but for whom the woman at the shop +added some melted butter. Wherefore he said “Censeo.” Many of my +readers must remember my mentioning that, a short time ago, when he was +distributing sentences of death among the furniture, he did not take +very much notice of certain table-napkins which were lying beside the +checked calico dress. Now, however, he acted as screech-owl, or bird of +death, and gallows-priest to them also, and routed them out all but a +few. When they were gone, he remarked, in an incidental manner, shortly +before Martinmas Day, that the napkin-press was still to the fore, +though it was not very clear what was the use of it, as there was +nothing for it to press. +</p> + +<p> +“If such a thing should be necessary,” he said, “the press might very +well get leave of absence on private affairs, until <i>we</i> get through +the smoothing-press, oiling-press, and napkin-press of destiny, and +come out all smooth and beautiful ourselves, and can stick the napkins +into our button-holes on their return.” His first intention had even +been to reverse the order of the funeral procession, and put the press +in the van of it as <i>avant-courier</i> of the napkins, and in that event +he would only have had to invert his syllogism (as well as his +procession) in this way: “I don’t see what we can do with the napkins, +or how we’re to press them and keep them smooth, till we get the press +home again.” +</p> + +<p> +I am most firmly convinced that the majority of people would have done +as Lenette did with reference to my trade-consul Siebenkæs, and his +Hanseatic confederation with everybody who dealt in anything—that is, +clasped her hands above her head, and said, “Oh! the thoughtless, silly +creature! he’ll soon be a beggar at this rate: the beautiful +furniture!” +</p> + +<p> +Firmian’s constant answer was— +</p> + +<p> +“You would have me kneel down and howl, and tear my coat in +lamentation, like a Jew—my coat, which is torn already and pull my +hair out by the roots—that hair, which terror frequently causes to +fall off in a single night. Isn’t it enough if <i>you</i> do the howling? +Are you not my appointed <i>præfica</i> and keening-woman? Wife, I swear to +you, and that as solemnly as if I were standing on pig’s bristles,<a name="div2Ref_47" href="#div2_47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> +that if it is the will of God, who has given me so light and merry a +heart—if it be His will that I am to go about the town with eight +thousand holes in my coat, and without a sole to either shoe or +stocking that I am to go on always getting poorer and poorer” (here his +eyes grew moist in spite of him, and his voice faltered), “may the +devil take me and lash me to death with the tuft of his tail if I leave +off laughing and singing; and anybody who pities me, I tell him to his +face, is an ass. Good heavens! the apostles, and Diogenes, and +Epictetus, and Socrates, had seldom a whole coat to their backs—never +such a thing as a shirt—and shall a creature such as I let a hair of +him turn grey for such a reason, in miserable PROVINCIALISTIC times +such as these?” +</p> + +<p> +Right, my Firmian! Have a proper contempt for the narrow heart-sacs of +the big clothes-moths about you—the human furniture-boring worms. And +ye, poor devils, who chance to be reading me—whether ye be sitting in +colleges or in offices, or even in parsonage-houses, who perhaps +haven’t got a hat without a hole in it to put on your heads, most +certainly haven’t got a black one—rise above the effeminate +surroundings of your times to the grand Greek and Roman days, wherein +it was thought no disgrace to a noble human creature to have neither +clothes nor temple, like the statue of Hercules; take heed only that +your soul shares not the poverty of your outward circumstances; lift +your faces to heaven with pride—a sickly faint northern Aurora is +veiling it, but the eternal stars are breaking through the thin +blood-red storm! +</p> + +<p> +It was but a few weeks now to the St. Andrew’s Day shooting-match, +which was Lenette’s consolation in all her troubles, and to which all +her wishes were directed; however, there came one day on which she was +something worse than melancholy—inconsolable. +</p> + +<p> +This was Michaelmas: on that day the press was to have followed +Lenette’s Salzburg emigrants, the napkins, as their lady superior; but +nobody in all the town would have anything to do with it. The sole +anchor of refuge was one Jew, because there was no species of animal +(in the shape of articles of merchandise) which did not flee to his +Noah’s ark of a shop. Unfortunately, however, the day when the +napkin-press applied to him was a Jewish feast-day, which he kept more +strictly than ever he did his word. He said he would see about it +to-morrow. +</p> + +<p> +Permit me, if you please, to take this opportunity of making a few +remarks of importance. Is it not a piece of most culpable negligence on +the part of the Government that, seeing the Jews are, as it were, +farmers-general and metal-kings of the Christians in German states, the +days of their feasts and fasts, and other times connected with their +worship, are not published and clearly made known for the benefit of +those very numerous persons who wish to borrow of them, or have any +business to transact with them? Those who suffer most from this +omission are just the upper circles of society, persons of birth and +rank, officials of high position; these are the persons who bring +papers and want money on Feasts of Haman, Feasts of Esther, of the +Destruction of the Temple, of the Rejoicing of the Law, and can’t +obtain any. Surely the Jewish festivals, with the hours at which they +begin and end, ought to be given in every almanack—as they have +been fortunately, for a considerable time, in those of Berlin and +Bavaria—or in newspapers—or be proclaimed by the crier, and carefully +taught in schools. The Jew, indeed, has no need of a calendar of <i>our</i> +festivals, since we are always ready to put off and postpone, if he +likes, every Sunday of the year, though it were the first Sunday of it, +the feast of the Jewish Circumcision; and consequently hereafter, when +the universal monarchy of the Jews is actually established, he won’t +take the trouble to append a Christian calendar to his own Jewish +calendars, as we now append the Jewish to our Christian. The necessity, +however, of inculcating in our schools a better and more exact +acquaintance with the seasons of the Jewish festivals, and with their +religious observances in general, will not be so fully manifest until +hereafter, when the Jews shall have elevated Germany to the proud +position of being their Land of Promise, leaving us to make our +crusade, and our return to the Asiatic land of promise, if we feel +disposed—to a holy sepulchre, and a sacred Calvary. +</p> + +<p> +And yet <i>I</i> think (to close this digression by another) that hereafter, +when we become the Christian numerators of Jewish denominators, we +should be wrong to set out, as modern crusaders, for the holy land, as +to which the Jews themselves trouble their heads but little. It is +certain that they will treat us with a far wider measure of the spirit +of tolerance than we, unfortunately, have extended to them; but their +genius for commerce, which they have hitherto been so much reproached +with, will be found to prove itself a guardian angel for us poor +Christians, and to take us under its tutelage, inasmuch as we are so +indispensably necessary to them as purchasers and consumers of the +unprepared hindquarters of the cattle (for it is only the fore-quarters +which they may eat, unless the veins are all taken out). Who else but +Christians can take the place of the beasts of burden—as no animal may +be degraded by working on the “Schabbes”<a name="div2Ref_48" href="#div2_48"><sup>[48]</sup></a> (Sabbath)—and perform the +necessary draught and other labour? and to whom are they to entrust the +performance of menial and manual employments, like the ancient +republicans, but to us, their nobler slaves and helots, whom they will, +therefore, be sure to treat with more consideration than they have +heretofore treated us when we have omitted to pay our promissory notes +as they became due. +</p> + +<p> +I return to our poor’s advocate, and record that on Michaelmas Day he +could get no money, and consequently no Michaelmas goose. Lenette’s +grief at the absence of the goose of her ecclesiastical communion we +must all share. Women, who care less about eating and drinking than the +most ascetic philosophers—caring, indeed, more about the latter +themselves than about the former—are at the same time not to be +controlled if they have to go without certain <i>chronological</i> articles +of diet. Their natural liking for burgherly festivities brings it about +that they would rather go without the appointed hymns and the gospel of +the day than without butter-cakes at Christmas, cheesecakes at Easter, +the goose at Michaelmas; their stomachs require a particular cover for +each festival, like Catholic altars. So that the canonical dish is a +kind of secondary sacrament, which, like the primary one, they take, +not for the palate’s sake, but “by reason of the ordinance.” Antoninus +and Epictetus could provide Siebenkæs with no efficient substitute for +the goose, with which to console the weeping Lenette, who said, +“We really <i>are</i> Christians, whatever you may say, and belong to +the Lutheran Church; and every Lutheran has a goose on his table +to-day—I’m sure my poor dear father and mother always had. As for you, +<i>you</i> believe in nothing.” Whether he believed in anything or not, +however, he slipped off, though it was the afternoon of the Jewish +feast-day, to the Jew, who kept a nice pen of geese, with livers both +fat and lean, serving as a post-stable for country friends of his own +religion. When he went into his place he pulled a duodecimo Hebrew +Bible out of his pocket and put it down on the table, with the words, +“It was a great pleasure to him to meet with a keen, diligent, student +of the law; to such a man it would be a real satisfaction to make a +present of his Bible, without asking a halfpenny for it; as it was, an +unpointed edition (that is to say, one without vowels), he couldn’t +read it himself, especially as even if it had <i>had</i> points, he couldn’t +have managed it. This napkin-press of mine, here”—he said, producing +it from under his coat-tails “I should be very glad if you would allow +me to leave with you, because I find it a good deal in my way at home; +I don’t quite know what to do with it. You see, I have particular +reasons for being anxious to get hold of a goose out of your pen; I +don’t mind if it’s as thin as a whipping-post. <i>If you like</i>, you may +<i>call</i> it giving it to me in charity on a holy day of this sort, for +all I care; it’ll make no difference to <i>me</i>. If I should ever come and +take away the press again, it’ll be an easy matter, and it’ll be time +enough, to go into the transaction afresh.” +</p> + +<p> +It was thus that, in order to secure his wife the free exercise of her +religious observances, he <i>brought in</i> this goose of controversy, which +<i>seemed</i> to have some polemical bearing, as well as to be connected +with distinctive doctrines of faith; and next day these two Doctor +Martin Lutherists ate up the Schmalkaldian article (and, indeed, +<i>another</i> Schmalkaldian article, a <i>commercial</i> one—cold iron, +namely—has often been employed in defence of the articles of +theology). Thus was the capitol of the Lutheran religion saved, in an +easy manner, by the bird, which was roasted (so to speak) at the fire +of an <i>auto-da-fé</i>. +</p> + +<p> +But on this particular morning up came the wigmaker, an individual whom +he was delighted to see generally, though <i>not</i> to-day, for on the day +before, Michaelmas, the quarter’s house rent was due, as we may +remember. The <i>Friseur</i> presented himself as a sort of mute bill “at +sight;” yet he was polite enough not to <i>ask</i> for anything. He merely +mentioned, in a casual manner, that “there was going to be an auction +of a variety of things on the Monday before St. Andrew’s Day, and in +case the advocate might care to get together a few things for it, he +thought he would give him notice of it, as he held a life appointment +from the Houses of Assembly as auction-crier.” +</p> + +<p> +He was scarcely down stairs before Lenette gave deep, but not loud, +expression to her woes, saying he had “dunned them now, and that the +whole house must know all about their disreputable style of +housekeeping: had he not talked about furniture?” It was +incomprehensible how the poor woman could have fancied anybody had been +in the dark about it before! Poor people are always the first to nose +out poverty. At the same time Firmian had been ashamed to tell the +<i>Friseur</i> that he had been obliged to appoint himself auctioneer of his +own furniture. Here he perceived that he blushed for his poverty more +before one person, and before the poor, than he did before a whole +town, and before the rich; and he flew into a furious indignation with +these execrable <i>eructations</i> of human vanity in his noblest parts. +</p> + +<p> +The path from hence to St. Andrew’s Day, all bordered with nothing but +thistles as it is, cannot possibly seem longer, even to the reader, +than it did to my hero, who, moreover, had to take hold of the thistles +and pull them up with his own hands. The garden of his life kept +getting more and more like a <i>jardin Anglais</i>, where only prickly and +barren trees, but no fruit-trees, were to be found. +</p> + +<p> +Every night, when he opened the latch of his bed-railings, he would +say, with great enjoyment, to his Lenette, “Only twenty (or nineteen, +or eighteen, or seventeen) days now to the shooting-match.” But the +hairdresser and auction-crier had played the deuce and all with +Lenette, though the evenings were long and dark and splendidly +convenient for needy borrowers on deposit, veiling and hiding the +naked, abashed, misery of the poor; she was ashamed the people in the +house should know, and afraid to meet them. Firmian, who was astonished +equally at the inexhaustible resources of his brain and of his house, +and who kept saying to himself, “Do you know, I’m really curious to see +what I shall hit upon to-day again, and how I shall manage to get out +of <i>this</i> difficulty now—” Firmian, a day or two after the Michaelmas +dinner, got his eye upon two more good articles of furniture—a long +cask-siphon and a rocking-horse (a relic of his childhood). “We haven’t +a cask, and we haven’t a baby,” he said. But his wife implored him, for +heaven’s sake, “not to put her to this shame. The horse and the siphon” +(she said) “are things that would stick out of the basket so terribly, +or out from under one’s apron, and in the moonlight everybody would see +them.” +</p> + +<p> +And yet <i>something</i> must go! Firmian said, in an odd cutting, yet +sorrowful way, “It must be so! Fate, like Pritzel,<a name="div2Ref_49" href="#div2_49"><sup>[49]</sup></a> is beating on +the bottom of the drum, and the oats are jumping on the top of it; we +have got to eat off the drum.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything,” she said, faint and beaten, “except things that stick out +so.” She searched about, opened the top drawer of the cupboard, and +took out a faded wreath of artificial flowers: she said, “Rather take +this!” and neither smiled nor wept! <i>He</i> had often looked at it; but as +he had sent it to her himself last New Year’s Day, the day of their +betrothal, and because it was so romantically beautiful (a white rose, +two red rosebuds, and a border of forget-me-nots) every fibre of that +tender heart of his would have stood out against parting with this +pretty relic—this memorial of better, happier, days. The patient, +resigned way in which she made the sacrifice of these poor old +flowers tore his heart in two. “Lenette!” he said, moved beyond +expression—“why, you know, these are our betrothal flowers!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, who’s to be any the wiser,” she said, quite cheerfully and quite +coolly. “You see they’re not so <i>big</i> as other things are.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you forgotten, then quite,” he stammered, “what I told you these +flowers meant?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me see,” the said, more coldly still, and proud of the goodness of +her memory, “the forget-me-nots mean that I’m not to forget you, and +that you won’t forget me—the buds mean happiness—no, no, the buds +mean happiness that’s not quite all come yet—and the white rose—I +don’t recollect now <i>what</i> the white rose means——” +</p> + +<p> +“It means pain” (he said, overwhelmed with emotion), “and innocence, +and sorrow, and a poor white face.” He clasped her in his arms, as the +tears came to his eyes, and cried, “Oh! poor darling! poor darling! +What can I do? It’s all beyond me! I should like to give you everything +the world contains, and I have nothing——” +</p> + +<p> +He ceased suddenly, for while his arms were round her, she had shut up +the drawer of the cupboard, and was looking at him with calm, clear, +gentle eyes, not the trace of a tear in them. She resumed her petition +in the old tone saying, “I may keep the siphon and the horse, mayn’t I? +We shall get more money for the flowers.” What he said was, “Lenette! +Oh, darling Lenette,” over and over again, each time more tenderly. +</p> + +<p> +“But why not?” she asked, more gently each time, for she didn’t +understand him in the least. “I had sooner pawn the coat off my back,” +was his answer. But as she now got the alarming idea into her head that +what he was driving at was the calico gown, and as <i>this</i> put her into +a great state, and as she immediately began to inveigh warmly against +all pledging of large articles; and as he clearly perceived that her +previous coldness had been thoroughly genuine, and not assumed, he +knew, alas! the very worst, a grief which no sweet drops of philosophy +could avail to alleviate, namely—she either loved him no longer, or, +she had never really loved him at all. +</p> + +<p> +The sinews of his arms were now fairly cut in two, the sinews of his +arms which had till now kept misfortune at bay. In the prostration of +this his (spiritual) putrid fever he could say nothing but—“Whatever +you please, dear; it’s all the same to me now.” +</p> + +<p> +Upon that, she went out delighted, and quickly, to old Sabel, but came +back again immediately. This pleased him; sorrow having gnawed deeper +into his heart during the three moments she was gone, he could follow +up the bitter speech with these quiet words: “Put up your marriage +wreath along with the other flowers, there’ll be a little more weight, +and a little more money for it; though it is nothing like such pretty +work as my flowers.” +</p> + +<p> +“My marriage wreath?” cried Lenette, colouring with anger, while two +bitter tears burst from her eyes. “No, that I positively <i>shall</i> NOT +let go, it shall be put with me into my coffin, as my poor dear +mother’s was. Did you not take it up in your hand from the table on my +wedding-day, when I had taken it off to have my hair powdered, and say +you thought quite as much of it as you did of the marriage ceremony +itself, if not more? (I noticed what you said very carefully, and +remember it quite distinctly). No, no, I am your wife, at all events, +and I shall never let that wreath go as long as <i>I</i> live.” +</p> + +<p> +His emotion now took a new bent, one more in harmony with hers, but he +masked this behind the question, “What made you come back in such a +hurry?” It was that old Sabel had just been in at the bookbinder’s, it +seemed, and Herr von Meyern had been there too. That young gentleman +was in the habit of getting off his horse and dropping in, partly to +see what new books the ladies were having bound at the bookbinder’s, +and in what sort of pretty bindings, partly to stick up his leg +with its riding boot upon the cobbler’s bench and get him to stitch a +top tighter, asking about all sorts of things during the process. +The world—(which expression can only mean the collection of female +tongue-threshers of empty straw belonging to Kuhschnappel)—may +undoubtedly conclude, if it be so minded, the Venner to be a regular +Henry the Fowler with respect to more women than one in the house, the +latter being a feminine <i>Volière</i> to him; but I want proofs of this. +Lenette, however, didn’t trouble herself about any proofs, but piously +fled out of the way of Rosa the birdcatcher. +</p> + +<p> +I further relate (doing so, moreover, without any very marked blush for +the mutability of the human heart) that at this point Firmian’s +compressed thoracic cavity grew several inches wider, so as to give +admission to a considerable modicum of happiness, for no other reason +but that Lenette had kept such a tight grasp of her marriage-wreath, +and had endured the Venner for so short a time. “She is faithful, at +all events, although she may be rather cool; in fact, I don’t really +believe she <i>is</i> a bit cool, either, after all.” So that he was quite +pleased that she should have her way (which was <i>his</i> also) about +keeping the wedding-wreath in the house and in her heart. Besides +which, without contending further about the betrothal-wreath, he let +her have that <i>other</i> way of hers, though less willingly—this being a +proceeding which hurt <i>his</i> feelings only, not hers. His old flower +keepsake was accordingly deposited in the hands of an obliging lady who +rejoiced in the title of “Appraiser,” on the solemn understanding that +it was to be redeemed with the very first dollar which should drop from +the bird-pole on St. Andrew’s Day. +</p> + +<p> +The blood-money of these silken flowers was so parcelled out as to be +made available by way of stepping-stones in the muddy path leading to +the Sunday before the shooting-match. This Sunday (the 27th November, +1785) was to be followed by the Monday for which the auction had been +announced; on the Wednesday he (and I hope all of us with him) would be +in his place in front of the bird-pole. +</p> + +<p> +It is true, however, that on the Sunday he had to ford a stream swollen +to a considerable extent by rainy weather; we will go through it after +him, but I give due notice that, in the middle, it is pretty deep. +</p> + +<p> +The stomach of his inner man evinced a wonderful disrelish, and +exhibited a reversed peristaltic motion towards everything in the shape +of pawning, since the affair of the flowers. The reason was—there was +nothing more to which he could <i>refer</i> his wife. At first, he used to +refer her to the shooting-match; but when the mortar and the chair had +evacuated the fortress without tuck of drum, they not being articles of +a sort to be obtained as prizes for shooting, he took to referring her +to public auctions at which he could always buy what he might require +at about half price. Finally, though still referring her to auctions, +he did so no longer with a view to import, but to export, trade—as a +seller, rather than as a buyer, of commodities; in which respect he +surpasses Spain. +</p> + +<p> +He who has risen victorious over great and serious attacks of an +insulting or offensive nature, has often had to yield to very small and +trifling ones; and so it is with our troubles. The stout, firm heart, +which has beat strongly on all through long years of bitter trial and +affliction, will often break at once, like over-flooded ice, at some +lightest touch of Fortune’s foot. Till now, Siebenkæs had carried +himself erect, and borne his burden without a bend, ay, and with a +merrier heart than many a man. Up to this hour, he really hadn’t minded +the whole affair one single button. Had he not (merely to mention one +or two instances) pointed out that, in the matter of clothes, he was +better off than the Emperor of Germany, who (he said) had nothing to +put on, on his coronation-day in Frankfort, but a frightful old +cast-off robe of Charles the Great’s, not much better than Rabelais’s +old gown, though <i>that</i> was not by several centuries so old as the +Imperial one? And once when his wife was sadly looking over his fading +perennial clothes flora, he told her all she had to do was to suppose +he was serving in the new world with a thousand or so of other Anspach +men, and the ship which was bringing out their new uniforms had been +captured by the enemy, so that the whole force had nothing to put on +but what they would have preferred to have been able to take off. +Likewise that what he had had to go upon, and to take his stand upon +for a considerable time past, had been something much superior to his +own pair of boots (by this he clearly meant pure apathy); as for his +boots, they, having been twice new fronted, had been shoved in like +pocket telescopes, or trombones, till they had become a pair of fair +halt-boots; just as the German <i>corpora</i>, also, by the influence of +long years of civilisation and culture, have got considerably taken in, +the long rifle having been docked into a short, or non-commissioned +officers’ rifle. +</p> + +<p> +But on the Sunday to which I am alluding, he was far too much scared at +the sight of one single bird of prey and of ill omen, flying athwart +the lonely Sahara desert in which his life was passing. He himself was +taken by surprise at this alarm of his; he would have expected anything +else but alarm under the circumstances. For as it had hitherto been his +custom to prepare himself for dark and tragic scenes by comedy +rehearsals of them—by which I mean, that he carefully read up, +beforehand, all the legal steps which Herr von Blaise could take +against him, thus taking up, in sport, and in advance, the burdens +which the future had in store—it astonished him greatly to find that +an ill, quite certain to come, and clearly foreseen, should prove to +have longer thorns, when it came up towards him out of the future, than +it seemed to possess while still at a distance. +</p> + +<p> +So that when, on the Sunday, the messenger of the Inheritance Office +came, with the long-expected THIRD dilatory plea of the Heimlicher, and +with the third affirmatory decree written on the face thereof, as his +breast was in the condition of a vacuum (no air to breathe in it) +before his coming, his poor heart grew sick and breathless indeed, when +this fresh stroke of the air-pump exhausted the receiver even more +thoroughly than it had been emptied before. +</p> + +<p> +Amid the multiplicity of matters which it has been my duty to report to +the public, I have omitted, on purpose, all mention of the second of +Mr. Blaise’s dilatory pleas, because I thought I might assume that +every reader who has had as much as half a ship’s pound weight of +legal documents through his hands—or one single settlement of law +accounts—would take it for granted, as a matter of course, that the +first petition for delay would infallibly be followed by a second. It +reflects much discredit on our administration of justice that every +upright, honourable counsel finds himself compelled to adduce such a +number of reasons (I wish I might say “lies”) before he can be accorded +the smallest, necessary term of delay; he has got to say his children +and his wife are dying; that he has met with all kinds of unfortunate +accidents, and has thousands of things to do, journeys to make, and +sicknesses. Whereas it ought to be quite enough for him to say that the +preparation of the innumerable petitions for delay with which he is +overwhelmed, leaves him little time to write anything else. People +ought to notice that these petitions for delay tend, as all other +petitions do, to the protracting of the suit, just as all the wheels of +a watch work together to retard the principal wheel. A slow pulse is a +sign of longevity not only in human beings but in lawsuits. It seems to +me that an advocate who has any conscience is glad to do what he +can to promote the length of life in his opponent’s suit—not in +his own client’s, he would make an end of <i>that</i> in a minute if he +could—partly to punish the said opponent, partly to terrify him, or +else to snatch, from his grasp a favourable judgment (a sort of thing +as to which nobody can form an idea whether it is likely or not)—for +as many years as possible; just as in ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ the people +who had a black mark on their brow were doomed to the torture of +eternal life. The object of the man of business on the opposite side is +a similar prolongation of the war to <i>his</i> opponents, and thus the two +counsel immesh the two clients in a long drag-net of documents, &c., +each with the best possible intentions. On the whole, lawyers are not +so indifferent to the question, “What is the law?” as to the question, +“What is justice?” For which reason they prefer arguing to writing; as +<i>Simonides</i>, when he was asked by the king the question, “What is God?” +begged for a day to consider his answer—then for another day—then for +another—and for another, and always for another, because no man’s life +is sufficient to answer that question—so the jurist, when he is +asked, “What is justice?” keeps continually asking for more and more +delays—he can never reply to the question—indeed, if the judges and +clients would let him, he would gladly devote his whole life to writing +replies to a legal question of this sort. Advocates are so used to this +way of looking at matters, that it never strikes them that there is +anything unusual about it. +</p> + +<p> +I return to my story. This blow of the iron secular arm, with its six +long thief- and writing-fingers, all but felled Siebenkæs to the earth. +The vapours about his path in life condensed to morning mist, the +morning mist to evening clouds, the clouds to showers of rain. “Many a +poor devil has more to do than he can manage,” he said. If he had had a +pleasant, cheerful wife, he would not have said this; but one such as +his, who painfully <i>trailed</i> her cross (instead of taking it up), and +was all lamentations—an elegiac poetess, a Job’s comforter—was +herself a <i>second</i> cross to bear. +</p> + +<p> +He set to work and thought the whole thing over; he had hardly enough +left to buy the next year’s almanack, or a bundle of Hamburgh quills +(for his satires used up Lenette’s feather dusters much more than his +own energies, so that he often thought of cutting Stiefel’s red +pipe-stalk into a pen); he would have been delighted to convert his +plates into something to eat (there were none left, however), following +the example of the Gauls, who used round pieces of bread as plates +first, and afterwards as dessert; or of the Huns, who, after riding +upon pieces of beef (by way of saddles) till it was partly cooked, +dined upon these saddles. His half-boots would need to be new fronted, +and abbreviated for the third time, before the arrival of the impending +shooting-match day; and of the necessary requisites for the performance +of that operation the only one in existence was the artist, Fecht the +cobbler. In short, for that important occasion he had nothing to put on +his back or in his pocket, his bullet-pouch, or his powder-horn. +</p> + +<p> +When a man intentionally works his anxieties and apprehensions up to +the highest possible pitch, some consolation is sure to fall upon his +heart from heaven, like a drop of warm rain. Siebenkæs began +catechising himself more strictly, asking himself what it really was +that he was tormenting himself about. Nothing but the fear of having to +go to the shooting-match without money, without powder and shot, and +without having had his boots abbreviated for the third time! “Is that +really all?” he said. “And what, if you please, is there to make it a +compulsory matter that I should go there at all? I’ll tell you what it +is” (he went on to himself), “I am the monkey complaining bitterly +that, having stuck his hand into a narrow-mouthed bottle of rice, and +filled it, he can’t pull it out without a corkscrew. All I’ve got to do +is to sell my rifle and my shooting ticket; all I’ve got to do is to +open my hand and draw it out empty.” So he made up his mind to take his +rifle to the barber on the day of the auction to be put up to sale. +</p> + +<p> +All battered, bruised, and weary with the day, he climbed into his bed, +with the thought of which safe and sheltered anchoring ground he +consoled himself all day long. “There is this blessed property about +night,” he said, as he sat and spread the feathers of his quilt level, +“that while it lasts we need trouble ourselves neither about candles, +coals, victuals, drink, debts, nor clothes; all we want is a bed. A +poor fellow is in peace and comfort as long as he is lying down: and, +luckily, he has only got to stand for half of his time.” +</p> + +<p> +The attacks of syncope, to which our souls and our cheerfulness are +subject, cease, as those of the body do (according to Zimmermann), when +the patient is placed in a horizontal position. +</p> + +<p> +Had his bed been provided with bed-tassel, I should have called it the +capstan, whereby he heaved himself slowly up on the Monday morning from +his resting place. When he got up, he ascended to the garret, where his +rifle was nailed up in an old, long field-chest, to keep it safe. This +rifle was a valuable legacy from his father, who had been huntsman and +gun-loader to a great prince of the empire. He took a crowbar, and, +using it as a lever, prised up the lid with its roots, <i>i. e</i>. nails; +and the first thing he saw in it was a leather arm, which “gave him +quite a turn;” for he had had many a good thrashing from that arm in +bygone days. +</p> + +<p> +It will not take me too far out of my way to expend a word or two on +this subject. This full-dress arm had been borne by Siebenkæs’s father +on his body (as it might be in the field of his escutcheon) ever since +the time when he had lost his natural arm in the military service of +the before-mentioned prince, who, as some slight reward, had got him +his appointment as gun-loader to his corps of Jägers. The gun-loader +wore this auxiliary arm fastened to a hook on his left shoulder; it +being more like the arm of a Hussar’s pelisse, or an elongated glove, +worn by way of ornament, than as a <i>mouth</i> Christian of an arm +(pretending to be what it was not). In the education of his children, +however, the leather arm served, to some extent, the purpose of a +school library and Bible Society, and was the <i>collaborateur</i> of the +fleshly arm. Every-day shortcomings—for instance, when Firmian made a +mistake in his multiplication, or rode on the pointer dog, or ate +gunpowder, or broke a pipe—were punished <i>not</i> severely, that is, only +with a stick, which in all good schools runs up the backs of the +children by way of capillary sap-vessel or siphon, to supply the +nourishing juice of knowledge; or is the carriage-pole to which entire +winter-schools are harnessed, and at which they tug with a will. But +there were two other sorts of transgressions which he punished <i>more</i> +severely. When one of the children laughed at table during meals, or +hesitated, or made a blunder during the long table-grace or evening +prayers, he would immediately amputate his adventitious arm with his +natural one, and administer a tremendous thrashing to the little +darling. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian remembered, as if it had happened yesterday, one occasion when +he and his sisters had been thrashed, turn about, for a whole half-hour +at dinner-time with the battle-flail, because one of them began to +laugh while the long muscle was swishing about the ears of another, who +was serious enough. The sight of the bit of leather made his heart burn +even at this day. I can quite see the advantage to parents and teachers +who try the expedient of unhooking an empty by an organic arm, and +smiting a pupil with this species of Concordat, and alliance between +the <i>temporal</i> and <i>spiritual arms</i>; but this mode of punishment ought +to be <i>invariably</i> the one made use of; for there is nothing which +infuriates children more than anything <i>new</i> in the way of instruments +of punishment, or a new mode of application of those in general use. A +child who is accustomed to rulers and blows on the back, must not be +set upon with boxes on the ear and bare hands; nor one accustomed to +the latter treated to the former. The author of these Flower-pieces had +once a slipper thrown at him in his earlier days. The scar of that +slipper is still fresh in his heart, whereas he has scarcely any +recollection of lickings of the ordinary sort. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs pulled the arm of punishment and the rifle out of the chest; +but what a treasure trove there was beneath them! Here was help, +indeed! At all events he could go to the shooting-match in shorter +boots, and eat whatever he liked for some days to come. What most +astonishes both him and me in this affair (it is easily explicable, +however) is that he had never thought of it sooner, inasmuch as his +father was a Jäger; while, on the other hand, I must confess it could +not have happened on a luckier day, because it chanced to be just the +day of the auction. +</p> + +<p> +The hunting spear, the horse’s tail, the decoy bird, the fox-trap, the +<i>couteau de chasse</i>, the medicine-chest, the fencing mask and foil—a +collection of things which he had never had a thought of looking for in +the chest—could be taken over instantly to the town-house, and set up +to auction on the spot by the hairdressing Saxon. +</p> + +<p> +It was done accordingly. After all his troubles, the little piece of +good luck warmed and gladdened his heart. He went himself after the +box—which was sent just as it stood to the auction, except that the +rifle and the leathern artery were kept back—to hear what would be +offered for the things. +</p> + +<p> +He took up his position (on account of the excessive length of his +half-boots) at the back of the auctioneer’s table, close to his hectic +landlord. The sight of this pile of heterogeneous goods and chattels +all heaped up higgledy-piggledy (as if some grand conflagration were +raging, and it had been collected in haste for safety; or as if it were +the plunder of some captured city), goods and chattels sold, for the +most part, by people on the downward path to poverty, and bought by +those who had arrived at poverty already—had the effect of making him +contemn and despise more every moment all this complex pumping +apparatus, this machinery for keeping the spring-wells of a few petty, +feeble lives in clear and vigorous flow; and he himself, the engineer +and driver of this machinery, felt his sense of manliness grow +stronger. He was furious with himself, because his soul had seemed +yesterday to be but a sham jewel, which a drop of aquafortis deprives +of its colour and lustre, whereas a real jewel never loses either. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing awakens our humour more, nor renders us more utterly +indifferent to the honour paid to mere rank and worldly position, +than our being in any manner compelled to fall back upon the honour +due to ourselves (independently of our chance position), our own +<i>intrinsic worth</i>, our being compelled to tar over our inner being with +philosophy (as if it were a Diogenes’ tub), by way of protection +against injuries from without; or (in a prettier metaphor) when, like +pearl oysters, we have to exude pearls of maxims to fill the holes +which worms bore in our mother-of-pearl. Now pearls are better than +uninjured mother-of-pearl; an idea which I should like to have written +in letters of gold. +</p> + +<p> +I have good reasons of my own for prefacing what has to follow with all +this philosophy, because I want to get the reader into such a frame of +mind that he may not make too great a fuss about what the advocate is +going to do now: it was really nothing but a harmless piece of fun. As +the be-powdered lungs of the auctioneer were more adapted to wheezing +and coughing than to shouting, he took the auction-hammer from this +hammer-man and sold off the things himself. True, he only did it for +about half an hour, and only auctioned his own things; and even +then he would have thought twice about taking the hammer in hand and +setting to work, if it hadn’t been such an indescribable delight +to him to hold up the horse’s tail, the spear, the decoy-bird, &c., and +hammer on the table and cry, “Four groschen for the horse’s tail, +<i>once</i>! five kreuzer for the decoy, <i>twice</i>!—going! Half-a dollar +for the fox-trap, once! two gulden for this fine foil, twice! two +gulden—going—going—and gone!” He did what it is an auctioneer’s duty +to do, he praised the goods. He turned the horse’s tail over and over, +and opened it out before the huntsmen who were at the sale (the +shooting-match had attracted many from a distance, as carrion does +vultures), stroked it with and against the hair, and said there was +enough of it to make snares for all the blackbirds in the Black Forest. +He held up the decoy-bird in its best light, exhibiting to the company +its wooden beak, its wings, talons, and feathers, and only wished there +were a hawk present, that he might bait the decoy and lure it. +</p> + +<p> +The entries in his housekeeping account-book, which, on account of the +wretchedness of my memory, I have had to refer to twice, show that the +sum received from the huntsmen amounted to seven florins and some +groschen. This does not include the medicine-chest nor the long-necked +mask; for nobody would have anything to say to <i>them</i>. When he went +home he poured the whole of this crown-treasure and sinking-fund into +Lenette’s gold satchel, taking occasion to warn her and himself of the +dangers of great riches, and holding up to both the example of those +who are arrogant by reason of wealth, and must therefore of necessity, +sooner or later, come to ruin. +</p> + +<p> +In my Seventh Chapter, which I shall commence immediately, I shall +at length be able, after all these thousands of domestic worries +and miseries, to conduct the learned world of Germany to the +shooting-ground and present to them my hero as a worthy member +of the shooting-club, with a rifle and bullets, and properly and +respectably—well, <i>booted</i>, more than <i>attired</i> for his bullets are +cast, his rifle cleaned, and his boots have put on their shoes, +Fecht having stitched, on his knee, the three-quarter boots down to +half-boots, and soled them with the—leather arm, of which enough has +been said already. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch07"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<p class="center">THE SHOOTING-MATCH—ROSA’S AUTUMNAL CAMPAIGN—CONSIDERATIONS +CONCERNING CURSES, KISSES, AND THE MILITIA. +</p> + +<p> +There is nothing which so much inconveniences me, or is so much to the +prejudice of this story (so beautiful in itself), as the fact that I +have made a resolution to restrict it within the compass of four +alphabets. I have thus, by my own act, deprived myself of everything in +the shape of room for digressions. I find myself, metaphorically, in a +somewhat similar position to one which I once found myself in, without +metaphor, on an occasion when I was measuring the diameter and +circumference of the town of Hof. On that occasion I had fastened a +Catel’s pedometer by a hook to the waistband of my trousers and the +silken cord which runs down the thigh to a curved hook of steel at my +knee, so that the three indexes on one dial (of which the first marks a +hundred steps, the second a thousand, and the third up to twenty +thousand) were all moving just as I moved myself. At this moment I met +a young lady, whom it was incumbent on me that I should see home. I +begged her to excuse me, as I had a Catel’s pedometer on, and had +already made a certain number of steps towards my measurement of the +diameter of Hof. “You see, in a moment,” I said, “how I am situated. +The pedometer, like a species of conscience, records all the steps I +take; and, with a lady, I shall be obliged to take shorter steps, +besides thousands of sideway and backward steps, all of which the +pedometer will put to the account of the diameter. So, you see, I am +afraid it’s quite impossible that I <i>can</i> have the pleasure of——” +However, this only made her the more determined that I <i>should</i>, and I +was well laughed at; but I screwed myself to the spot, and wouldn’t +stir. At last I said I would go home with her, pedometer and all, if +she would just read off my indexes for me (seeing I couldn’t twist +myself down low enough to see the dial)—read them off for me +twice—firstly, then and there, and secondly, when we got to her +house—so that I might deduct the steps taken by me in this young +lady’s company from the size of Hof. This agreement was honestly kept; +and this little account of the occurrence may be of service to me some +day if ever I publish (as I have not given up all hopes of doing) my +perspective sketch of the town of Hof; and townspeople who saw me +walking with the said young lady, and with the pedometer trailing at my +knee, might cast it in my teeth and say it was a lame affair, and that +nobody could calculate as to the steps he might take in a lady’s +company, far less apply them to the measurement of a town. +</p> + +<p> +St. Andrew’s Day was bright and fine, and not very windy. It was +tolerably warm, and there wasn’t as much snow in the furrows as would +have cooled a nutshell of wine, or knocked over a humming-bird. On the +previous Tuesday Siebenkæs had been looking on with the other +spectators, when the bird-pole had described its majestic arc in +descending to impale the black golden eagle with outstretched wings, +and rise again therewith on high. He felt some emotion as the thought +struck him, “That bird of prey up there holds in his claws, and will +dispense, the happiness or the misery of thy Lenette’s coming weeks, +and our goddess of Fortune has transformed herself and dwindled into +that black form, nothing left of her but her <span class="sc2">WINGS and BALL</span>.” +</p> + +<p> +On St. Andrew’s morning, as he said good-bye to Lenette, with kisses, +and in his abbreviated boots, over which he had a pair of goloshes, she +said, “May God grant you luck, and not let you do any mischief with +your rifle.” She asked several times if there was nothing he had +forgotten—his eyeglass, or his handkerchief, or his purse; “And mind +you don’t get into any quarrel with Mr. von Meyern,” was her parting +counsel: and finally, as one or two preliminary thundrous drum-ruffles +were heard from the direction of the courthouse, she added most +anxiously, “For God’s sake, mind and don’t shoot yourself; my blood +will run cold the whole forenoon every time I hear a gun go off!” +</p> + +<p> +At length the long thread of riflemen, rolled up like a ball, began to +unwind itself, and the waving line, like a great serpent, moved off in +surging convolutions to the sound of trumpets and drums. A banner +represented the serpent’s crest, and the standard-bearer’s coat was +like a second flag beneath the other. The town-soldiery, more +remarkable for quality than for quantity, shot the mottled line of +competitors at intervals with the white of their uniforms. The +auctioneering hairdresser—the only member of the lower ten thousand +who rejoiced in a powdered head—tripped along, keeping the white peak +of his cap at the due degree of distance from the leather pigtails of +the aristocracy, which he had that morning tied and powdered. The +multitude felt what a lofty position in this world really was, when, +with bent heads, they raised their eyes to Heimlicher von Blaise, the +director of the competition, who accompanied the procession in his +capacity of aorta of the whole arterial system, or elementary fire of +all these ignes-fatui—or, in a word, as master of the shooters’ lodge. +Happy was the wife who peeped out and saw her husband marching past in +the procession—happy was Lenette, for her husband was there, and +looked gallantly up as he passed by. His short boots looked very nice, +indeed; they were made both in the old fashion and in the new, and, +like man, had put on the new (short) Adam over the old one. +</p> + +<p> +I wish Schulrath Stiefel had given a thought or so to the St. Andrew’s +shooting-match, and looked out of his window at his Orestes; however, +he went on with his reviewing. +</p> + +<p> +Now, when these processional caterpillars had crept together again at +the shooting-ground, as upon a leaf—when the eagle hung in his +heavenly eyrie, like the crest of the future’s armorial bearings—when +the wind instruments, which the troop of “wandering minstrels” had +scarce been able to hold firmly to their lips, blared out their loudest +now that the band was halted, and as the procession, with martial tramp +and rattle of grounded rifles, came with a rush into the empty echoing +shooting-house, everybody, strictly speaking, was more or less out of +his senses, and mentally intoxicated; and that although the lots were +not even drawn, far less any shot fired. Siebenkæs said to himself, +“The whole thing is stuff and nonsense, yet see how it has gone to all +our heads, and how a mere <i>unbroken</i> faded flower-wreath of pleasant +<i>trifles</i>, wound ten times about our hearts, half chokes and darkens +them. Our thirsty heart is made of loose, absorptive mould; a warm +shower makes it swell, and as it expands it cracks the roots of all the +plants that are growing in it.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. von Blaise, who smiled unceasingly upon my hero, and treated the +others with the rudeness becoming authority, ordered the lots to be +drawn which were to decide the order in which the competitors were to +shoot. The reader cannot expect Chance to stop the wheel of Fortune, +thrust in her hand, and, behind her bandage, pull out from among +seventy numbers the very first for the advocate; she drew him the +twelfth, however. And at length the brave Germans and imperial citizens +opened fire upon the Roman eagle. At first they aimed at his crown. The +eagerness and zeal of these pretenders were proportioned to the +importance of the affair: was there not a royal revenue of six florins +attached to this golden penthouse when the bullet brought it down—to +say nothing whatever of other crown property, consisting of three +pounds of tow and a pewter shaving-dish. The fellows did what they +could; but the rifle placed the crown of the eagle, not, alas! on our +hero’s head, but upon that of No. 11, his predecessor, the hectic +Saxon. He had need of it, poor fellow! seeing that, like a Prince of +Wales, he had come into possession of the crown debts sooner than of +the crown itself. +</p> + +<p> +At a shooting contest of this kind nothing is better calculated to +dissipate everything in the shape of tedium than to have arrangements +made for “running shooting” (as it is called) being carried on by those +who are waiting their turn at the birdpole. A man who has to wait while +sixty-nine other people slowly aim and shoot before his turn comes +round, may find a good deal to amuse him if, during that time, he can +load and aim at something of a less lofty kind—for instance, a +Capuchin general. The “running” or “swing” shooting, as carried out at +Kuhschnappel, differs in no respect from that of other places. A piece +of canvas is hung up, and floats to and fro; there are painted dishes +of edibles upon it, as on a table-cloth, and whoever puts a bullet +through one of these paintings obtains the original—just as princes +choose their brides from their portraits, before bringing home the +brides in person; or as witches stick pins into a man’s image in order +to wound the prototype himself. The Kuhschnappelers were, on this +occasion, shooting at a portrait on this canvas, which a great many +persons considered to represent a Capuchin general. I know that there +were some who, basing their opinion chiefly upon the red hat in the +portrait, considered it to represent a cardinal, or cardinal-protector, +but these have clearly, in the first place, got to settle the point +with a third party, which differed from both of those above mentioned, +holding that it portrayed the whore of Babylon—that is to say, a +European one. From all of which we may form a pretty accurate estimate +of the amount of truth contained in another rumour—which I +contradicted in the first hour of its existence—namely, that the +Augsburg people had taken offence at this effigy-arquebusading, and had +written, in consequence, to the attorney-general representing that they +felt themselves aggrieved, and that it was an injustice to one religion +if, within the bounds of the holy Roman empire, a general of a +religious order should be shot to shivers, without a Lutheran +superintendent general being also shot to shivers at the same time. I +should certainly have heard something further about this, if it had +been anything but mere wind. Indeed, I have a shrewd suspicion that the +whole story is no more than a false tradition, or garbled version of +<i>another</i> story, which a gentleman of rank belonging to Vienna recently +<i>lied</i> to me at table. What he said was, that in the more considerable +towns of the empire, where the spirit-level of religious toleration has +established a beautiful equilibrium between Papists and Lutherans, many +had complained, on the part of the Lutherans, of the circumstance that +although there were equal numbers of night-watchmen and censors (that +is, transcendental night-watchmen), keepers of hotels, and keepers of +circulating libraries of each communion, yet there were more Papists +hanged than Lutherans; so that it was very clear, whether the Jesuits +had to do with it or not, that a high and important post such as the +gallows was not filled with the same amount of impartiality as the +Council of State, but with a certain bias towards the Catholics. I +thought of contradicting the story, in the most distinct terms, in the +‘Literary Gazette’ of December last, but Government declined to pay the +expense of the insertion. +</p> + +<p> +However, although those who occupied themselves with the “swing” +shooting <i>did</i> only have a Capuchin to aim at, the said swing shooting +was every bit as important a business as the shooting at the <i>standing</i> +mark. I must point out (in this connection) that there were edible +prizes attached to the divers bodily members of this said general of +his order, which had their attractions for riflemen of a reflective +turn of mind. An entire Bohemian porker was the prize appointed for him +who should pierce the heart of the Capuchin pasha—which heart, +however, was represented by a spot no bigger than a beauty-patch—so +that he who should hit this little mark would have need of all his +skill and nerve. The cardinal’s hat was easier of attainment, for which +reason it was worth only a couple of jack. The honorarium of the +oculist who should succeed in inserting new (<i>leaden</i>) pupils into the +cardinal’s eyes consisted of an equivalent number of geese. As he was +portrayed in the full fervour of prayer, it was well worth anyone’s +while to send a bullet through between his hands, seeing that this +would be tantamount to knocking the two fore-quarters out of a +cantering, smoked pig. And each of the cardinal’s feet rested upon a +fine hind-quarter or ham. I do not hesitate for a moment—whatever the +imperial burgh of Kuhschnappel may say to it—to record, with the +utmost distinctness, that no portion of the whole lord-protector was +more poorly endowed, or had a scantier revenue and salarium allotted to +it, than his navel; for there was nothing to be got out of that, with +however good a bullet, but a Bologna sausage. +</p> + +<p> +The advocate had failed in his designs upon the crown; but fortune +chucked him the cardinal’s hat to make up for it—the cardinal’s hat +with two pike inside it. But some puissant necromantic spell of +invulnerability turned all his bullets aside from the eagle’s head, and +from the general’s too. He would fain have sent one eye, at any rate, +out of the face of the harlot of Babylon, but he could not manage that +either. +</p> + +<p> +Now the prize-lists—which are correct, seeing that they were made +out by the secretary, under the eyes of the president, Herr von +Blaise—state with distinctness that the head, the ring in the beak, +and the little flag, fell into the hands of numbers 16, 2, and 63. +</p> + +<p> +The sceptre was now being aimed at; and Siebenkæs would have been very +very glad, for his dear little wife’s sake (waiting for him now, as she +was, with the soup), to have sent that, at least, flying out of the +eagle’s talons, and to have fixed it, by way of a bayonet, on to his +rifle. +</p> + +<p> +All the numbers who had tried their best to break off this golden +oak-branch had shot in vain, except the worst—the most to be dreaded +of all—his own predecessor and landlord. <i>He</i> aimed, and shot—and the +gilded harpoon quivered. Siebenkæs fired—and the eel-spear came +tumbling down. +</p> + +<p> +Messrs. Meyern and Blaise smiled, and uttered congratulations; the +blowers of instruments, crooked and straight, blew, in honour of the +advent of this new bird-member, a blast both loud and shrill (like the +Karlsbad people, when a new bath-guest arrives), looking closely and +carefully at their music as they did so, though they had played their +little <i>fanfares</i> far oftener than the very night-watchmen. All the +infantas—I mean all the children—began a race for the sceptre, but +the buffoon dashed among them, and scattered them; and, taking up the +sceptre, presented that emblem of sovereignty to the advocate with one +hand, holding in the other his <i>own</i> emblem of sovereignty, the whip. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs contemplated with a smile the little twig of timber—the +little branch, sticking to which the buzzing swarms of nations are so +often borne away; and he veiled his satisfaction under cover of the +following satirical remarks (which the reigning Heimlicher overheard, +and applied to himself):— +</p> + +<p> +“A very pretty little frog-shooter! It <i>ought</i>, by rights, to be a +honey-gauge; but the poor bees are crushed by it, that their honey-bags +may be got out of them! The Waiwodes and the despots, child-like, put +the bees of the country to death, and take the honey from their +<i>stomachs</i>, not from, their <i>combs</i>. A truly preposterous and absurd +implement! It is made of wood; very likely a piece broken off a +shepherd’s crook, and gilded, pointed, and notched—one of those +shepherd’s staves with which the shepherds often drag the sheep’s fat +out of them while they are feeding in the meadows!” +</p> + +<p> +He had ceased to be conscious, now, when he emitted the bitterest +satirical matter (there was never a drop of it in his heart); he often +turned mere acquaintances into foes with some joke, made merely for the +sake of jesting; and couldn’t imagine what made people vexed with him, +and why it was that <i>he</i> couldn’t have his little bit of fun with them +as well as any one else. +</p> + +<p> +He put the sceptre into the breast of his coat and took it home, seeing +that they would not shoot up to his number again before dinner-time. He +held it up straight and stiff, as the king of diamonds holds his, and +said to Lenette, “There’s a soup-ladle and sugar-tongs for you, all in +one!” the allusion being to the two pewter prizes, which, in company +with a sum of nine florins, had fallen to his share by way of +sceptre-fief. It was enough for one shot. And next he gave an account +of the catching of the pike. He expected that Lenette would, at the +very least, go through the five dancing positions and execute Euler’s +“knight’s move” on the chess-board of the room-floor, into the bargain, +within the first five seconds after hearing the news. She did what she +<i>could</i> do, namely, nothing at all; and said what she knew, namely, +that the landlady had been holding forth, with bitter severity, to the +bookseller’s wife, on the subject of the non-payment of the rent, and +further, concerning her own husband, whom she characterised as a +smooth-tongued flatterer and payer of compliments—a man who didn’t +half threaten people. “What I tell you,” repeated the sceptre-bearer, +“is, that I have this day had the luck to shoot a couple of pikes and a +sceptre, Wendeline Engelkraut!” and he banged his sceptre-knout in +indignation upon the table where the crockery was all set out. She +answered at last, “Well, Lucas came running a short time ago and told +me all about <i>that</i>; I <i>am so</i> glad about it, but I should quite think +you will shoot a good many more things yet—will you not? I said so to +the bookseller’s wife.” +</p> + +<p> +She was slipping into her old cart-rut again, you see, but Firmian +thought, “She can cry and mourn loud enough, but deuce a bit of +gladness can she show when a fellow comes home with a pike or two under +his arm, and a sceptre or so.” It was just the same with the wife of +the gentle-hearted Racine, when he threw down a long purse of golden +Louis XVI. he had got hold of, on the table. +</p> + +<p> +How, or whence, oh! beloved wives, cometh to you the naughty trick ye +have of making a kind of parade of an insupportable frigidity and +indifference, just on the very occasions when your husbands come to you +laden with good news, or with presents—that at the very moment when +Fate brightens the wine of your joy into “bloom,” your vats grow turbid +with the lees of the <i>old</i> liquor? Comes it from your custom of showing +only one of your faces at a time, like your sister and prototype, the +moon? or from a peevish discontent with destiny? or is its cause a +sweet, delicious, overflowing happiness and gladness, making the heart +too full and the tongue too hard to move? +</p> + +<p> +I believe it is often from all these causes combined. +</p> + +<p> +In men, again—sometimes, too, in women, but only in one out of a +thousand—it may arise from the sad thought of the sharks which tear +off the arm with which, down in the dark ocean, all breathless and +anxious, we have clasped hold of four pearls of happiness. Or, perhaps, +from a deeper question still. Is not our heart’s inward bliss but an +olive-leaf which a dove brings to us, fluttering over the great deluge +foaming and seething all round us—an olive-leaf which she has culled +for us away in the far distant Paradise, high up above the flood, clear +and blissful in the eternal sun? And if all we attain of that whole +olive-garden is but one leaf, instead of all its flowers and its fruit, +is this leaf of peace, is this dove of peace, to give to us something +<i>beyond</i> peace—namely, hope? +</p> + +<p> +Firmian went back to the shooting-ground, his breast full of +growing hopes. The heart of man, which, in matters of chance, +makes its calculations in direct defiance of the theory of +probabilities, and when heads have turned up once, expects them three +times running—(although what <i>ought</i> to be anticipated is the very +reverse)—or reckons upon hitting the eagle’s talon became it has +knocked the sceptre out of it—this heart of man, uncontrollable alike +in its fears and in its hopes, the advocate took with him to the +shooters’ trench. +</p> + +<p> +He came not by the talons, however. And at the folded praying claws or +hands of the general of the Capuchins—these algebraic exponents or +heraldic devices of two forequarters of pork—aimed he alike in vain. +</p> + +<p> +It mattered not; more was left of the eagle, when all was done, than +would be this day of Poland, if the latter, or its coat of arms—a +silver eagle in a bloody field—were to be set up on a throne or a +bird-pole, and shot at by a shooting-club composed of an army or two. +</p> + +<p> +Even the imperial globe was not yet knocked down. Number 69, a +formidable foregoer, Mr. Everard Rosa von Meyern, had taken his +aim—eager to cull <i>this</i> forbidden fruit—a Ribstone pippin and +football fit for a very prince, such as this imperial apple, was a +thing of too great price to be grasped for the sake of what was to be +gained along with it—’twas honour alone that fired his heart—he +pulled his trigger, and he might just as well have aimed in the +opposite direction. Rosa—this particular apple being too high out of +his reach—went, all blushes, in among the lady spectators, dealing out +apples of Paris all round, and telling each lady how lovely she was, +that she might be convinced how handsome he was himself. In the eyes of +a woman, her panegyrist is, firstly, a very <i>clever</i> man, and, ere +long, such a <i>nice</i>-LOOKING one. Rosa knew that grains of incense are +the anise which these doves fly after, as though infatuated. +</p> + +<p> +Our friend had no need to disquiet himself about any of the would-be +fruit-gatherers—about the second, eighth, or ninth, till it came to +the eleventh—and he was the Saxon, who shot like the demon in person. +There were few among the seventy who didn’t wish this accursed +gallows-number at the deuce, or at all events into the vegetable +kingdom, where it is altogether absent.<a name="div2Ref_50" href="#div2_50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> The hairdresser fired, +struck the eagle on the leg, and the leg remained hanging aloft, with +the imperial globe in the talons. +</p> + +<p> +His lodger (and lawyer) came up to the scratch, but the landlord stood +still in the trench, to satisfy his soul with curses of his luckless +star. As the former levelled the sights of his rifle upon the ball +above, he made up his mind that he would not aim at the ball at all, +but at the eagle’s tail, so as simply to <i>shake</i> the apple down. +</p> + +<p> +In one second the worm-eaten world-apple fell. The Saxon cursed beyond +all description. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs all but offered up an inward prayer, not because a pewter +mustard-pot, a sugar-dish, and five florins came showering along with +the apple into his lap, but for the piece of good luck—for the warm +burst of sunshine which thus came breaking out from among the clouds of +the distant storm. “Thou wouldst prove this soul of mine, happy +Fortune,” thought he, “and thou placest it, as men do watches, in all +positions—perpendicular and horizontal, quiet and unquiet—to see if +it will go and mark the time correctly in all, or no. Ay, truly! it +<i>shall</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +He let this little, bright, miniature earth-ball roll from one hand to +the other, spinning and weaving, as he did so, the following brief +chain of syllogisms:—“What a genealogical tree of copies! Nothing but +pictures within pictures comedies within comedies! The emperor’s globe +is an emblem of this terrestrial globe of ours—the core of each is a +handful of earth—and this emperor’s globe of mine, again, is a +miniature emblem of a real emperor’s, with even less of earth—none at +all, in fact. The mustard-pot and sugar-dish, again, are emblems of +this emblem. What a long, diminishing series, ere man arrives at +enjoyment!” Most of man’s pleasures are but <i>preparations</i> for +pleasure; he thinks he has attained his <i>ends</i>, when he has merely got +hold of his <i>means</i> to those ends. The burning sun of bliss is beheld +of our feeble eyes but in the seventy mirrors of our seventy years. +Each of these mirrors reflects that sun’s image less brightly—more +faint and pale—upon the next; and in the seventieth it shimmers upon +us all frozen, and is become a moon. +</p> + +<p> +He ran home, but without his globe, for he did not mean to tell her of +that till the evening. It was a great refreshment to him to slip, +during his shooting vacations, away from the public turmoil to his +quiet little chamber, give a rapid narrative of anything of importance +going on, and then cast himself back into the <i>mêlée</i>. As his number +was a next-door neighbour to Rosa’s, and they had, consequently, their +holidays at the same time, it surprises me that he did not come upon +Herr von Meyern beneath his own window, inasmuch as that gentleman was +walking up and down there, with his head elevated, like an ant. He who +desires to destroy a young gentleman of this species, let him look for +him <i>under</i> (if not <i>in</i>) a lady’s window; just as an experienced +gardener, when he wants to kill woodlice or earwigs, needs only lift up +his flower-pots to annihilate them by the score. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs did not hit so much as another shaving the whole of the +afternoon; even the very tail, which he had attacked with such success +in his bold stroke for the conquest of the globe of the holy Roman +empire, resisted all his efforts to knock it off. He let himself be +drummed and fifed home by the town militia towards evening. When he got +to his wife’s door, he there assumed the <i>rôle</i> of Knecht Ruprecht (the +children’s “Bogie,” who, on St. Andrew’s Day, bestows upon them, for +the <i>first</i> time in their career, fruit, and fear along with the same), +and, growling in a terrible manner, chucked his (wooden) apple in to +her; a piece of fun which delighted her immensely. But really I ought +not to record such little trifles. +</p> + +<p> +As Firmian laid his head on his pillow, he said to his wife, “This time +to-morrow, wife, we shall know if it be two crowned heads that we are +going to lay on the pillow, or not! I shall just <i>recall</i> this +important minute to your memory to-morrow night, when we’re going to +bed!” When he got up in the morning he said, “Very likely this is the +last time that I shall rise a common, ordinary person, without a +crown.” +</p> + +<p> +He was so anxious to have the mutilated bird (all wet with dew, a mass +of gunshot wounds and compound fractures) once more before his bodily +eyes, that he hardly knew how to possess himself in patience till the +time came. But it was only as long as he <i>did not</i> see the eagle that +his hopes of shooting himself into a king at him endured. He was, +therefore, delighted to agree to a proposal made by the clever Saxon, +whose bullet had throughout the proceedings always cleared the way for +his number-neighbour’s; the proposal was, “we go shares in gains and in +losses—in the bird and in the cardinal.” This copartnership doubled +the advocate’s hopes by the process of halving them. +</p> + +<p> +But these companions in arms didn’t bring down a single painted +splinter the whole of the afternoon. Each in his secret heart thought +the other was the bird of evil omen; for in matters of chance we are +prone to hang our faith upon a bit of superstition, rather than to +nothing at all. The fickle Babylonish harlot went fluttering off with +that amount of bashful coyness, that the hairdresser once sent a bullet +within an ace of the fellow who was working her backwards and forwards. +</p> + +<p> +At last, however, in the afternoon, he sent his Cupid’s dart right +through that black heart of hers, and, by consequence, through the pig +at the same time. This almost terrified Firmian; he said that if he +couldn’t hit anything himself he would accept only the head of this +pig—this polypus in the heart of the Babylonian <i>fille de joie</i>. All +that was left of the bird was its <i>torso</i>, which stuck to its perch +like the very Rump Parliament, which these pretenders to the crown +would so fain have dissolved. +</p> + +<p> +A regular running musketry fusilade of eager interest, enthusiasm, +emulation, now went flashing from breast to breast, fanned by every +puff of powder which rose in smoke as a rifle went off. When the bird +shook a little all the competitors shook also, except Herr von Meyern, +who had gone off, and—seeing what a state of excitement everybody was +in, especially our hero—marched away to Madame Siebenkæs, thinking +that he had a better chance of becoming, in <i>that</i> quarter, king of a +queen than he had here of acquiring the sovereignty of the riflemen. +However, my readers and I shall slip into the Siebenkæs’ chamber after +him presently. +</p> + +<p> +Twice already had the seventy numbers loaded in vain for the decisive +shot; the obstinate stump still stuck glued to its perch, and scarce so +much as trembled; the poor tantalised hearts were torn and pierced by +every bullet that sped on its course. Their fears waxed apace, so did +their hopes, but most of all their curses (those brief ejaculatory +prayers to the devil). The theologians of the seventh decade of the +present century had the devil often enough in their pens—in their +denials or in their assertions of him—but the Kuhschnappelers had him +far oftener in their mouths, particularly the upper classes. +</p> + +<p> +Seneca, in his ‘Remedies for Anger,’ has omitted the simplest of all, +the devil. True, the Kabbalists highly extol the therapeutic powers of +the word Shemhamphorash, which is a name of a diametrically opposite +character; but I have observed, for my part, that the spotted, +malignant fever of wrath, so readily diagnosed by the raving delirium +of the patient, is instantly relieved, dispersed, and mitigated, by +invoking the name of the devil, which is perhaps, indeed, quite as +efficacious a remedy as the wearing of amulets. In the absence of this +name, the ancients, who were altogether without a Satan, recommended a +mere repetition of the A B C, which, it is true, does <i>contain</i> the +devil’s name, only too much diluted with other letters. And the word +Abracadabra, spoken <i>diminuendo</i>, was a cure for corporeal fevers. As +regards the inflammatory fever of anger, however, the greater the +quantity of morbid matter which has to be ejected from the system +through the secretions of the mouth, the greater is the number of +devils necessary to make mention of. For a mere trifling irritation—a +mild case of simple anger—“the devil,” or perhaps “hell and the +devil,” will generally be found sufficient; but for the pleuritic fever +of rage I should be disposed to prescribe “the devil and his infernal +grandmother:” strengthening the dose, moreover, with a “<i>donnerwetter</i>” +or two, and a few “<i>sacraments</i>,” as the curative powers of the +electric fluid are now so generally recognised. It is unnecessary to +point out to me that in cases of absolute canine fury or maniacal +wrath, doses of the specific, such as the foregoing, are of little +avail; I should, of course, let a patient in this condition be “taken +and torn by all the devils in hell.” But what I would fain render clear +is that, in all these remedies, the real <i>specific</i> is the devil; for +as it is his sting which is the cause of our malady, he himself has got +to be employed as the remedy, just as the stings of scorpions are cured +by the application of scorpions in powder. +</p> + +<p> +The tumult of anticipation shook up the aristocracy and the sixpenny +gallery into one common whole. On occasions like this—as also in the +chase and in agricultural operations—the aristocracy forget what they +are, viz., something better than the citizen classes. An aristocrat +should, in my opinion, never for a moment lose sight of the fact that +his position with reference to the common herd is that which the actor +now a days stands in with respect to the chorus. In the time of Thespis +the whole of the tragedy was sung and acted by the chorus, while one +single actor, called the protagonist, delivered a speech or two, +unaccompanied by any music, bearing on the subject of the play. +Æschylus introduced a second actor, the deuteragonist; Sophocles even a +third, the tritagonist. In more recent times the actors have been +retained, but the chorus omitted, unless we consider those who applaud +to represent it. In a similar manner also, in this world of ours +(mankind’s natural theatre), the chorus, <i>i. e</i>. the people, has been +gradually cleared off the stage, only with more advantage than in the +case of smaller theatrical ones, and promoted from taking part in the +action of the drama (which the protagonists (princes), deuteragonists +(ministers), and tritagonists (people of quality), are better fit to +do), to the post of spectators who criticise and applaud—what was the +chorus in Athens, now sitting at ease in the pit, near the orchestra, +and before the stage where the great “business” is going on. +</p> + +<p> +By this time it was past two o’clock, and the afternoons were brief; +yet the saucy bird would not stir. Everybody swore that the carpenter +who had hatched it from its native block was a low scoundrel, and must +have carved it out of tough branchwood. But at last, all battered, with +nearly the whole of its paint broken away from it, it did appear to be +somewhat disposed to topple down. The hairdresser, who, like the common +herd in general, was conscientious towards individuals only, not +towards an aggregation of them, now without any scruple secretly +doubled his bullets (since he could not double his rifle), putting in +one for himself and one for his brother in arms, in the hope that this +decomposing medium might have the effect of precipitating the eagle. +“The devil and his infernal grandmother!” cried he, when he had fired +his shot, making use of the febrifuge or cooling draught above alluded +to. He now had to place all his trust in his lodger, to whom he handed +his rifle. Siebenkæs fired, and the Saxon cried, “Ten thousand devils!” +doubling in vain the dose of devils, as he had the dose of bullets. +</p> + +<p> +They now, in despair, laid aside their rifles and also their hopes; for +there were more pretenders to this crown than there were to that of +Rome in the time of Galienus, when there were but thirty. This shooting +septuaginta had all telescopes at their eyes (when they had not rifles +there), that they might observe how there were a greater number of +bullets in this heaven-suspended constellation of theirs than there are +stars in the astronomical one of the eagle. The faces of all beholders +were now turned towards this Keblah of a bird, like those of the Jews +towards their ruined Jerusalem. Even old Sabel sat behind her table of +sweetmeats customerless, and gazing up at the eagle. The earlier +numbers didn’t even give themselves the trouble of shaking a pinch of +powder into their pans. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian pitied these oppressed hearts, swimming heavily in turbid, +earthy blood—for whom at this time, the setting sun, the bright array +of sky tints, and the broad, fair world were all invisible—or, rather, +all shrivelled up to a battered block of wood. The surest token that +these hearts were all lying fettered in the eternal dungeon of need and +necessity, was that none could make a single witty allusion either to +the bird or the kingship. It is only concerning matters which leave our +souls free and unshackled that we notice similitudes and connection. +</p> + +<p> +“This bird,” thought Firmian, “is the decoy of all these men, and the +money is what baits the lure.” But he himself had three reasons for +desiring to be king: firstly, to laugh himself to death at his own +coronation; secondly, on account of his Lenette: thirdly, on account of +the Saxon. +</p> + +<p> +The second half of the seventy gradually fired off, and the earlier +numbers began to load again, if it were for nothing but the fun of the +thing. Every one put in two bullets now. Our two Hanseatic confederates +came once more up to the mark, and Siebenkæs borrowed a more powerful +glass, screwing it on to his rifle like the finder of a telescope. +</p> + +<p> +No. 10 loosened the bird from its joining to the pole. Nothing but the +sheer weight of it now retained it on its perch, for they had well nigh +saturated and incrusted the wood of it with lead (as certain springs +transform wood into iron). +</p> + +<p> +The Saxon had but to graze the eagle-torso—ay, or even the perch of +it—nay, the very evening breeze had but to give an extra puff—to send +the bird of prey swooping down. He had his rifle to his shoulder—aimed +for a whole eternity (there were fifty florins hanging in the sky)—and +pulled his trigger. The powder flashed in the pan. The band had all +their trumpets ready at their lips—trumpets horizontal, music +perpendicular—the boys stood round ready to seize the fallen skeleton; +the buffoon in his excitement couldn’t think of a joke to make—his +ideas were all up beside the bird; the poor, anxious, eager, excited +hairdresser drew his trigger once more, and again ’twas but a flash in +the pan. Great drops of perspiration bedewed him; he glowed, he +trembled; loaded, aimed, fired, and sent his bullet several ells, at +the least, away over the bird. +</p> + +<p> +He stepped back, pale and silent, in a cold perspiration; not an oath +did he utter; nay, I suspect he offered up a silent prayer or two that +his co-partner might, by heaven’s grace, capture the feathered game. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian went forward, thinking as hard as he could about something +else, to keep down his thrilling excitement; aimed, not very long, at +this, his anchor in his little storms, as it hung hovering in the +twilight, fired; saw the old stump turn three times round in the air, +like Fortune’s wheel, and, at last, break loose, and come pitching +down. +</p> + +<p> +As, when the old French kings were crowned, a live bird always +fluttered in the air; as, at the apotheoses of the Roman emperors, an +eagle soared skyward from out the funeral pyre, so did one swoop +downward from the heavens at the coronation of my hero. +</p> + +<p> +The children screamed, and the trumpets blared. One moiety of the +assemblage crowded to see who the new king was, and to have a look at +him; while the other moiety streamed crowding round the jester, as he +advanced bearing that shattered bullet-case, the eagle’s body, holding +it up above the heads of the throng. The barber ran to meet it, crying, +“Vive le roi,” and adding that he was a king himself into the bargain; +and Firmian moved towards the door in silence, full of happiness, but +fuller of emotion. +</p> + +<p> +And now it is time that we should all of us hurry to the town to see +how Rosa fares, what kind of throne he gains <i>chez</i> Madame Siebenkæs +(while her husband is thus ascending <i>his</i>)—a richer throne, or only a +pillory—and what number of steps he climbs towards whichever of the +two it may prove to be. +</p> + +<p> +Rosa knocked at Lenette’s door, and straightway entered in at it, in +order that she might not have a chance of coming and ascertaining who +was there. “He had torn himself away from the shooting-match; her +husband was coming immediately, and he would wait for him there. His +rifle had once more been excessively fortunate.” It was with these +truths that he came into the presence of the alarmed Lenette, bearing, +however upon his countenance, an assumed aristocratic frigid zone. He +walked, in an easy and unconcerned manner, up and down the room. He +inquired whether this April weather affected her health at all; as for +himself, it produced in him a kind of miserable prostrating low fever. +Lenette, timid and nervous, stood at the window, her eyes half in the +street, half in the room. He glanced, in passing, at her work-table, +took up a paper bonnet shape and a pair of scissors, and put them down +again, his attention being arrested by a paper of pins. “Why, these are +No. 8’s,” he said; “these pins are a great deal too large, Madame; +their heads would do for No. 1 shot. The lady whose hat you were +putting them in ought really to be immensely grateful to me.” +</p> + +<p> +He then went quickly up to her, and, from a spot a trifling distance +below her heart (where she had a whole quiver, or thorn-hedge of +needles planted, ready for use), he plucked one out with a dauntless +coolness, and held it up for her inspection, saying, “Look how badly +this is plated; ’twill spoil every stitch you take with it.” He threw +it out of the window, and evinced symptoms of being about to pluck out +the remainder from that heart (where the fates had stuck none other +than such as were “badly plated”), and stick the contents of his own +needle-book into that pretty pincushion instead. But she waved him off +with an icy, repellant, gesture, saying, “Don’t trouble yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I really wish your husband would come,” he said, looking at his watch. +“The king’s shot must be over long ere this time.” +</p> + +<p> +He took up the paper cap-pattern again, and the scissors; but, as she +fixed on him a gaze of deep anxiety (lest he should spoil her pattern), +he took from his pocket a sheet of verses dipped in hippocrene, and, by +way of passing the time, he clipped this up, by wavy lines, into a +series of hearts, one within the other. This gentleman, who, like the +Augurs, always strove to carry off the <i>heart</i> of the sacrifice—he, +whose own heart (like that of a coquette) constantly grew again as +often as he lost it (as a lizard’s tail does)—he had the <i>word</i> +“heart,” which Germans and men in general seem almost to shrink from +uttering, continually on his tongue, or, at all events, impressions of +it in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +My belief that his motive for leaving behind him (as he did) his +needles, and his rhymeful hearts, was that he had observed of women +that they always think fondly of an absent person when they chance to +see something of his which he has left behind. Rosa belonged to that +class of persons (of both sexes) who never show any cleverness, +delicacy of perception, or knowledge of human nature, save in matters +relating to love of the opposite sex. +</p> + +<p> +He now catechised out of her a number of cooking and washing receipts +of various kinds, and these, despite her cautious monosyllabicity, she +imparted—prescription fashion—in all their fulness, both of words and +of ingredients. At length he made preparations for departure, saying, +he had been most anxious for her husband’s homecoming because of a +certain matter of business which he could not well discuss with him on +the shooting-ground, among so many people, and before Herr von Blaise. +“I shall come another day,” he said; “but the most important point of +the affair I can mention to yourself,” and he sat down before her, with +his hat and stick in his hand. Just as he commenced his recital, +however, observing that she was standing, he laid aside his hat and +stick to place a chair for her, opposite to his. His propinquity was +grateful to her Schneiderian membrane, at any rate; his odour was +paradisaic; his pocket-handkerchief a musk-bag, his head an altar of +incense, or magnified civet-ball. (Shaw has remarked that the whole +viper tribe has the property of emitting a peculiar, sweet scent.) +</p> + +<p> +“She might readily see,” he said, “that it referred to that wretched +lawsuit with the Heimlicher. The poor’s advocate did not deserve, +indeed, that a man should interest himself in <i>his</i> favour; but then, +you see, he had an <i>admirable</i> wife, who <i>did</i> deserve it.” (He +italicised the word “admirable” by means of a hurried squeeze of her +hand.) “He had been fortunate enough to induce Herr von Blaise to defer +his ‘no’ three separate times, though he had not as yet been able to +speak to the advocate in person. But now, that a pasquinade of Mr. +Leibgeber’s (whose hand was well known), had come to light near a +stove-statue at the Heimlicher’s, nothing approximating to a yielding, +or a payment of the trust-fund, was to be dreamt of for a moment. Now +this was a state of matters for which his very heart bled, particularly +as, since he had been in such poor health of late, he felt only too +keen a sympathy and interest in everything; he knew perfectly well what +an unhappy condition her (Lenette’s) household matters had been placed +in by this lawsuit; and had often sighed, in vain, over many things. He +should be delighted, therefore, to advance whatever she might require +for current expenditure. As yet she did not know <i>him</i> in the slightest +degree, and perhaps could scarce surmise what he did, from motives of +the purest benevolence, for six charities in Kuhschnappel—though he +could produce documentary evidence if she liked,” and he did produce +and hand to her six receipts of the Charitable Commission. I should not +be giving proof of that impartiality of character which I bear the +reputation of possessing, did I not here freely admit, and clearly +place on record, that the Venner had, from his youth up, always shown a +certain disposition to benefit and assist the poor of both sexes, and +that his consciousness that he dealt in this large-hearted manner, did +(when compared with the narrow close-fistedness prevalent in +Kuhschnappel) give him some warrant for bearing himself with a certain +amount of proper pride towards those mean and miserly beings who sate +in judgment upon his little genial breaches of the moral laws. For his +conscience bore him witness that, conversely to the process whereby +spiders are metamorphosed into jewels, he spun his shining webs (of +gold and silver), and in their meshes, wet with the glittering dew of +tears, made an occasional capture from time to time. +</p> + +<p> +But for a woman like Lenette (he continued) he would do things of a +much grander description; as proofs of which, given already by him, he +needed only to point to the fact that he had set at defiance the +Heimlicher’s hostility towards her husband, and that he had more than +once quietly swallowed speeches of her husband’s own, such as in his +social position he had never suffered anybody to address to him before. +“Name any sum of money you are in want of; by Heaven, all you have to +do is to ask for it.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette, bashful and trembling, glowed red with shame at this discovery +of (what she had believed to be) the mystery of her poverty and her +pawnings. With the view of pouring a few drops of oil on the troubled +waters, he began, by way of preamble, to make some disparaging remarks +concerning his fiancée at Bayreuth. “She reads too much, and doesn’t +work enough. I only wish she could have the benefit of a few lessons +from <i>you</i> in housekeeping. And really, a lady such as you, with so +many attractions (quite unaware of them, too, herself), so much +patience, such wonderful diligence and assiduity, should have a +very different kind of household than this place for her sphere of +action.” Her hand was by this time lying still in the stocks—the close +arrest—of his; her wings and her tongue, as well as her hands, were +tied and fettered by that fainthearted incapacity of self-assertion +which is born of the sense of poverty. When women were in question, Mr. +Everard’s longings and likings paid no heed to boundary-marks; but +rather strove hard to obliterate them, and get rid of them altogether. +Most men, in the wild, unreasoning whirl of their appetites, are like +the jay, which tears the carnation to tatters in order to get at its +seeds. +</p> + +<p> +Upon her downcast eyes he now riveted a long gaze of fondness, not +withdrawing it, however, when she raised them up; and, by dint of +keeping his eyes very wide open, and thinking with great vividness on +pathetic and touching subjects, he managed to squeeze out about as much +water as would have sufficed to make an end of a humming bird of the +smaller sort. +</p> + +<p> +In him, as in a fine actor, all false emotions became for the time real +and genuine; and when he flattered any one, he at once began to respect +him. As soon as he felt there were tears enough in his eyes, and sighs +enough in his breast, he asked her if she had <i>any idea</i> what was +causing them. She looked innocently, and with kindly alarm, into those +eyes of his, and her own began to overflow. This greatly encouraged +him, and he said, “It is the fact that <i>you</i> have not such a happy lot +as you deserve.” +</p> + +<p> +Ah! selfish pigmy! at such a moment you might have spared this poor, +anxious, trembling soul, sinking, well nigh, in an ocean of tears for +all the long, long past. +</p> + +<p> +But he knew no sorrow save of the theatrical, the transient, the petty, +and the sham sort; and so he spared her not. +</p> + +<p> +Yet that which he had expected would prove the bridge from his heart to +hers, namely, sorrow, became, on the contrary, the portcullis barrier +between them. A dance, or some <i>joyful</i> tumult of the senses would have +brought him further with this <i>commonplace</i>, every-day, honest, and +upright woman than three pailfuls of selfish tears. His hopes rose +high, as he laid his flowery, sorrow-laden head upon his hands, down +into her lap. +</p> + +<p> +But Lenette jumped up with such a suddenness that it nearly knocked him +over altogether. She gazed inquiringly into his eyes. Upright women +must, I think, have some instinct of their own concerning the +lightnings of the eye, by means of which they can distinguish between +the lurid flashes of hell and the pure coruscations of heaven. This +profligate was as little aware of the flashes of his eyes as was Moses +of the brightness of his countenance. Her glance shrunk before his +scorching gaze; at the same time I feel it incumbent on me as an +historian—seeing that readers by the thousand (and I myself into the +bargain) are all up in arms to such an extent against this defenceless +Everard—not to conceal the fact that Lenette had had her mind’s eye +firmly fixed upon certain rather rude and free-handed sketches which +Schulrath Stiefel had drawn for her of the manœuvring grounds of +rakes in general (and this one in particular), and, in consequence, had +pricked up her ears in alarm at each move he made, whether in advance +or in retreat. +</p> + +<p> +And yet every word I write in defence of the poor rascal will only tell +against him now; indeed, there are many ladies whose acquaintance with +the Salic Law (or Mr. Meiner’s work) teaches them that in former times +the penalty for touching a woman’s hand was the same as for hewing off +a man’s middle finger, namely, fifteen shillings, and who, being +indignant with Rosa for his hand pressures, would fain have him to be +duly punished therefor. I am convinced that these ladies would by no +means be pacified were I to go on speaking in his extenuation, for they +have doubtless learnt, out of Mallet’s ‘Introduction to the History of +Denmark,’ that formerly persons who kissed without leave, and against +the will, were, by the law of the land, liable to be banished. And +there are very many women of the present day who are strictly governed +by the ancient pandects of Germany, and, in the case of lip-thieves +(since, in the eye of the law, banishment and confinement to one place +are held to be tantamount and equivalent one to another), they adjudge +them—not, it is true, to be <i>banished from</i> their chambers, but to +<i>remain in</i> them; similarly, they lodge debtors (to whom they have +given their hearts, and who insist on retaining possession of the same) +in the Marshalsea of the Matrimonial Torus. +</p> + +<p> +When Rosa jumped up (as before set forth), he had nothing to urge in +extenuation of his false step but an aggravation or augmentation of it, +and accordingly he fairly took the marble goddess in his arms—But +at this point my progress is barred for a moment by an observation +which has to be made ere I proceed; it is this: There are many kindly +beauties who cover their retreats or make amends for their denials by +concessions. By way of making themselves some amends for their hard +services in the campaign of virtue, they offer no resistance at all in +matters of the smaller sort, skilfully abandoning a good many +intrenchments and outworks (in the shape of words, articles of dress, +and so on), to enable them to deftly steal a march upon the enemy and +outmanœuvre him—just as clever generals burn the suburbs that they +may fight the better up in the citadel. +</p> + +<p> +My sole object in making this observation is to point out that it did +not apply to Lenette in any respect whatever. Pure as she was in soul +and in body, she might have gone straight away into heaven just as she +stood, without changing so much as a stitch of her attire—have taken +her eyes, heart, clothes, everything except that tongue of hers, which +was uncultivated, rude, indiscreet; so that her resistance to Everard’s +attempted burglary on her lips was unnecessarily grave and discourteous +(considering what a trifling case of orchard-robbery it really was), +much more so than it would have been had Lenette been able to drive the +Schulrath’s highly-coloured prognostics concerning Rosa out of her +head. +</p> + +<p> +Rosa had anticipated a denial of a less unpleasant kind. His obstinacy +availed him nothing as against hers, which was the greater of the two. +A gnat-swarm of firm and passionate resolves buzzed about his ears; but +when at length (probably inspired thereto by the Schulrath) she said, +“Your lordship remembers that the Tenth Commandment says, ‘Thou shalt +not covet thy neighbour’s wife’”—from the crossroad between love and +hatred, on which he was standing, he suddenly made a great jump—into +his pocket and brought out a wreath of artificial flowers, “There!” he +cried, “take them, you nasty, inexorable creature! just this one +forget-me-not as a souvenir; devil fly away with me if I want anything +further!” If she <i>had</i> taken it, he <i>would</i> immediately have wanted +something further; but she turned her face aside and repulsed the +silken garland with both hands. At this the honeycomb of love in his +heart soured into very vinegar; he grew wild with fury, and throwing +the flowers right over the table, he cried, “Why, they are your own +pawned flowers—I redeemed them myself—so take them you <i>must</i>.” On +which he took his departure, not, however, without making his bow, +which Lenette, all hurt and offended as she was, ceremoniously +returned. +</p> + +<p> +She took the envenomed wreath to the window, to have a better light to +examine it by. Alas! these were indeed, and beyond all doubt, the very +roses and rosebuds whose steely thorns were wet with the blood-drops +from a pair of pierced hearts. Whilst she, thus weeping and bowed +beneath the weight of her woe, stunned and stupid rather than +observant, stood at her window, it suddenly struck her as a strange +circumstance that the torturer of her soul, though he had gone rattling +down the stairs in a hurry with noise enough, had never gone out at the +street-door. After a long and attentive watch, during which anxiety, +closely bordering upon terror, assumed the <i>rôle</i> of comforter and +spake louder than her sorrow (the future, at the same time, driving the +past out of view), the becrowned hairdresser came galloping home (the +crown of his hat pointing heavenwards), and shouted to her in a mere +parenthetical manner as he dashed by, “Madame the queen!” for his great +idea was, that before anything else he should rush home, and there on +the spot, and without a moment’s delay, make proclamation of the +kingship and queenship of four persons. +</p> + +<p> +There now devolves upon me the duty of conducting my readers to the +corner where the Venner is cowering. From Lenette he had <i>descended</i> +(in two senses of that word) to the hairdresser’s wife, one of that +common class of women who never so much as dream of an infidelity all +the year round—for no horse in all the kingdom is harder worked—and +commit one only when there appears on the scene some tempter, whom they +neither invite nor resist, probably forgetting all about the incident +by the time next baking day comes round. On the whole, the superiority +which the female middle-class is disposed to arrogate to itself over +that of a higher rank, is just about equally great as it is +questionable. There are not a great many tempters in the middle-class, +and those there are are not of a very tempting sort. +</p> + +<p> +Like the earthworm, which has ten hearts that extend all the way from +one end of it to the other, Rosa was fitted out with as many hearts as +there are species of women; for the delicate, the coarse, the +religious, the immoral—every sort, in fact; he was always ready with +the appropriate heart. For as Lessing and others so frequently blame +the critics for narrowness and onesidedness in matters of taste, +inculcating upon them a greater universality of it—a greater power of +appreciation of the beautiful, to whatsoever times and nations +belonging—so do men of the world also advocate a universality of taste +for the <i>live</i> beautiful, on two legs, not excluding any variety of it, +but deriving gratification from all. This taste the Venner possessed. +There was such a marked distinction between his feelings for the +wigmaker’s wife and for Lenette, that, in revenge upon the latter, he +came to the determination, on the stair, to take a jump right over this +distinction and slip in to pay a visit to the landlady, while her +narrow-chested husband was away scheming and plotting in confederacy +for a crown in another quarter. Sophia (this was her name) had been +always combing at wigs in the bookbinder’s on the occasions when the +Venner had been sitting there on the business of getting his novels and +life romances done up and bound, and there they had communicated to one +other, by looks and glances, all that which people are not in the habit +of confiding to third parties. Meyern made his <i>entrée</i> into the +childless abode with all the confident assurance of an epic poet, who +soars superior to all prefaces. There was a certain corner partitioned +off from the room by boards: it contained little or nothing—no window, +no chair, a little warmth from the sitting-room, a clothes-cupboard, +and the couple’s bed. +</p> + +<p> +When the first compliments had been exchanged, Rosa took up a position +behind the door of this partitioned space, for the street passed close +by the window, and at this late hour he was anxious not to give +occasion to unpleasant surmises on the part of passers by. Of a sudden, +however, Sophia saw her husband run by the window. The intent to commit +a sin may betray itself by a superabundance of carefulness and caution; +Rosa and Sophia were so startled at the sight of the runner, that she +begged the young gentleman to get behind the partition until her +husband should go back to the shooting-range. The Venner went stumbling +into the <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>, while Sophia placed herself at the door +of it, and, as her husband entered, made as though she were just coming +out of it, closing the door after her. The moment he had stuttered out +the news of his elevation in rank, he darted out of the room, crying, +“She upstairs there knows nothing about it yet.” Gladness and hurried +draughts of liquor had just blurred the sharp outlines of his lighter +ideas with a thin haze or fog. He ran out and called “Madame Siebenkæs” +up the stairs (he was anxious to be off again so as to join the +procession). She hastened half way down, heard the glad news with +trembling, and, either by way of masking her joy, or as a fruit of a +warmer liking for her husband now that fortune seemed kinder to him (or +it may have been, perhaps, <i>another</i> fruit which joy commonly bears, +namely, anxiety, or shall I name it fear?), she threw down to him the +question, “Is Mr. von Meyern out yet?” +</p> + +<p> +“What! was <i>he</i> in my room just now?” cried he, while his wife echoed, +unbidden, from the door, “Has <i>he</i> been in the house?” “He was here, +upstairs,” Lenette replied, with a touch of suspicion, “and he hasn’t +gone out yet.” +</p> + +<p> +The hairdresser’s suspicions were now awakened, for the consumptive +trust no woman, and, like children, take every chimney-sweep they see +for the devil himself, hoof, horns, tail and all. “Things are not all +exactly as they should be here, Sophy,” said he to his wife. The +passing brain-dropsy, induced by what he had drunk during the day and +by his half-share in a throne and fifty florins, had the effect of +screwing his courage up to such a pitch that he secretly formed the +idea of treating the Venner to a good sound cudgelling in the event of +his coming upon him in any illegal corner. Accordingly he started upon +voyages of discovery, first exploring the entrance passage, where +Rosa’s sweet-scented head served him as a trail, or lure; he followed +this incense-pillar of cloud into his own room, observing that this +Ariadne’s thread of his, this sweet odour, grew stronger as he went. +Here among the flowers lay the serpent—as, according to Pliny, +sweet-smelling forests harbour venomous snakes. Sophia wished herself +in the nethermost of Dante’s hells, though in fact and reality she +<i>was</i> there already. It dawned upon the hairdresser that if the Venner +would only stay where he was, in the closed titmouse-trap of the +partitioned corner, he should have bruin safe in his toils; +consequently he reserved till the last a peep into the said corner. +What is historically certain is, that he seized upon a pair of +curling-tongs wherewith to probe the dark corner and gauge the cubic +contents thereof. Into its dark depths he made a horizontal lunge with +his tongs, but encountered nothing. He next inserted this probe, this +searcher of his, into more places than one—firstly, into the bed, +next, under the bed (taking this time the precaution to keep opening +and shutting the tongs, which were not hot, on the chance of some stray +lock of hair getting caught in them in the darkness.) However, +all this trap captured was air. At this juncture he came upon a +clothes-cupboard, the door of which had always stood gaping ajar for +the last six years or so; the key had been lost just that time, and in +this slipshod household it was a matter of necessity to keep this door +open, otherwise the lock would have snapped to, and there would have +been no getting in. To-day, however, this door was close shut. The +Venner (in a profuse perspiration) was inside; the <i>friseur</i> pressed +the lock home, and then the net was fairly over the quail. +</p> + +<p> +The hairdresser, now master of the situation, quietly took the command +of his establishment at his ease; the Venner could not get out! +</p> + +<p> +He despatched Sophia (as red as a furnace and loudly dissentient, +though forced to obey) for the locksmith and his breaching implements; +however, she quite made up her mind to come back with a lie, not with a +locksmith. When she had marched off he fetched Fecht, the cobbler, up, +to be at once his witness of and his assistant in that which he +proposed to accomplish. The shoe-stitcher crept into the room softly at +his heels; the phthisic haircurler went up to the canary-cage and +addressed the bird imprisoned therein (tapping the while with his tongs +on the gate of this fortress of Engelsburg) as follows: “I <i>know</i> you +are in there, honourable Sir, make a move; there’s nobody here but me, +as yet (there’ll soon be more). I can break the cupboard open with my +tongs and let you out.” Laying his ear close to the door of this +Spandau, he heard the captive sigh. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! you are puffing and panting a little, honourable gentleman,” said +the wigmaker; “I am here at the door by myself now. When the locksmith +comes and breaks it open, we shall all see you, and I’ll call the whole +house; but all I shall ask to let you jump out now, quietly, and be off +unseen, will be a mere trifle. Give me that hat of yours, and a +shilling or two, and give me your custom.” +</p> + +<p> +At length the miserable prisoner knocked upon the door and said, “I +<i>am</i> in here; just let me out, will you, my man, and I’ll do all you +say. I can help, from the inside, to break open the door.” The wigmaker +and the cobbler applied their battering apparatus to the “parloir” of +this donjon-keep, and the captive bounded forth. During the breaking +open of the gates of jubilee the friseur parleyed or negotiated a +little more, and amerced the anchorite in the locksmith’s fee; at +last, bringing Rosa forth, like Pallas in her mail, when she issued +from Jove’s cranium into the light of day, “The landlord,” said Fecht, +“couldn’t have managed the job without me.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosa opened his eyes wide at the sight of this auxiliary deliverer from +the house of bondage, took off the sweet-smelling hat (which the +cobbler immediately clapped on to his own head), shed some drops of +golden rain from his waistcoat-pocket upon the pair, and, in dread of +them and of the locksmith’s arrival, fled home bareheaded in the dark. +The friseur, whose bald pate was so near to the triple crown of the +emperors of old, and the popes of the present (for the eagle gave +him a crown, the Venner a hat, and his wife had nearly placed +something else——),—however, the friseur, in high satisfaction of +this new martyr-crown of felt, which he had been envying the Venner +the possession of all the afternoon, went back with it to the +shooting-ground, that he might have the gratification of marching home +in company with his co-emperor, attended by their subjects and their +vassals. +</p> + +<p> +The wigmaker took his hat off to his royal brother Siebenkæs (that hat +so much more worthy of a co-king than his former one), and told him +something of what had been happening. +</p> + +<p> +The Heimlicher von Blaise smiled his Domitian smile to-day more +affectionately than ever, which made the bird emperor far from +comfortable; for friendliness and smiling make the heart colder when it +is cold to begin with, and warmer when it is warm—just as <i>spiritus +nitri</i> does water. From a friendliness of this particular kind nothing +was to be expected but its opposite, as in ancient jurisprudence +excessive piety in a woman was merely a proof that she had sold herself +to the devil. Christ’s implements of torture became holy relics; and, +conversely, relics of saints often become implements of torture. +</p> + +<p> +Under the twinkling gleams of the wide, starry firmament (where new +constellations kept bursting into view, in the shape of banging +rockets) the grand procession marched along. The competitors who had +come after the king’s shot had fired their rifles in the air, by way of +salute to the royal pair. The two kings walked side by side, but the +one who belonged to the guild of wigmakers found some difficulty in +standing (what between joy and beer), and would gladly have sat down +upon a throne. However, over these seventy Brethren of the Eagle, and +the two vicars of the empire, we are losing sight, and delaying to +treat of something else. +</p> + +<p> +To wit, the town militia, who are also present, or more properly +speaking, the Royal Kuhschnappel Militia. Concerning this regiment I +think a good deal, and say only about half what I think. A city or +county militia regiment—and particularly the Royal Kuhschnappel +Militia—is a distinguished and important body of men, whose <i>raison +d’être</i> is to scorn and show contempt for the enemy, by always turning +their backs upon him—showing him, in fact, nothing <i>but</i> backs, like a +well-ordered library. If the enemy has anything in the nature of +courage, then our said force sacrifices to Fear like the ancient +Spartans; and as poets and actors ought in the first place to +experience and picture to themselves in a vivid manner the emotions +they are about to portray, the militia endeavours to give an +illustration, in itself, of that panic terror into which it would fain +throw the enemy. Now with the view of affording these men of war (or +“of peace” if you prefer it) the necessary amount of practice in the +mimic representation of terror, they are daily put through a process of +being terrified at the city gates. It is <i>called</i> “being relieved.” +When one of these men of peace is on sentry, another of them, a comrade +of his, marches up to his sentry box, shouts out words of command at +him in a warlike tone of voice, and makes hostile and threatening +gestures in close proximity to his nose; the one who is on sentry also +cries out in a similar voice, goes through certain motions with his +weapon, and then lays it down and gets away as fast as he can; the +conqueror in this brief winter campaign retains possession of the +field, and puts on the watchcoat which he has taken from the other man +by way of booty; but that they may each have an opportunity of being +terrified by the others, they take the part of conqueror turn about. A +warrior of this peaceful order may very often be most dangerous in +actual war, when, in the act of bolting, he happens, in throwing his +rifle away with the bayonet fixed, to throw it too far, and harpoon his +too proximate pursuer with it. Militiamen of this sort (“precious” they +are in every sense) are usually posted, for greater security’s sake, in +public places where they are safe from injury, such as the gates of +towns, where these harpooners are protected by the town and gate; at +the same time I have often wished, in passing, that these students of +the art military were provided with a good thick stick, so that they +might have something to defend themselves with if anybody should try to +take away their muskets. +</p> + +<p> +It will appear to many that I am but artfully cloaking the shortcomings +of the militia in these respects; I am prepared for this—but it is not +difficult to perceive that this species of praise also applies to all +small standing armies of lesser principalities—forces which are +recruited only that they may recruit. I shall here utter myself on this +subject a little. Vuillaume recommends educators to teach children to +play at soldiers, to make them drill and mount guard, in order to +accustom them, by this play, to firm and active habits both of body and +of mind; in short, to render them firm and upright. This soldier-game +has been carried on for a considerable time already in Campe’s +Institute. But is Mr. Vuillaume really ignorant that scholar-drill, +such as he recommends, has been long since introduced by every good +prince of the empire into his dominions? Does he suppose it is anything +new when I tell him that these princes seize upon all strong young +fellows (as soon as they attain the canonical height) and have them +drilled, in order that they, the State’s children, may thus be taught +<i>mores</i>, carriage, and all that has to be acquired in the State’s +school? The truth is that, even in the very smallest principalities, +the soldiers often possess all the acquirements and accomplishments of +real soldiers; they can present arms, stand bolt upright at portals, +and <i>smoke</i> at all events, if not <i>fire</i>—matters which a poodle +learns +with ease, but a country bumpkin with more difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +To these rehearsals of warlike business I attribute it that many +otherwise clever and sensible men have allowed themselves to believe +that this sham soldiery of the little States, is in fact a real +soldiery; they must otherwise have seen in a moment that with so small +a force neither could a small territory be defended, nor a large one +attacked; neither is there indeed any need for even this small force, +since in Germany the question of relative strength is merged in that of +equality of religion. Hunger, cold, nakedness, and privation are the +benefits which Vuillaume considers the soldier-game to hold out to his +scholars, as lessons in patient endurance and fortitude; now these are +the very advantages which the State schools above referred to confer +upon the young men of the country—and that much more thoroughly and +efficaciously than Vuillaume does—which, of course, is the entire +object of the institution. I am quite aware that there are not +infrequent cases in which perhaps a third part of the population +escapes being made into soldiery, and consequently gets none of the +valuable practice in question; at the same time there can be no doubt +that if we even get the length of having two-thirds of the population +with rifles on their shoulders in the place of scythes, the remaining +third (inasmuch as it has considerably less to mow, to thresh, and to +subsist upon) obtains the before-mentioned benefits (of cold, hunger, +nakedness, &c.), almost gratis, and without having to fire so much as a +single shot. Let but barracks be multiplied in a sufficient ratio in a +country, in a province, parish, town, village (as the case may be), and +the remainder of the houses will of themselves settle down, into +suburbs, and accessory and out-buildings to the barracks, nay, become +absolute conventual establishments, in which the three monastic vows +(the Prince alone being <i>père provincial</i>) are, whether <i>taken</i> or +<i>not</i>, at all events most religiously <i>kept</i>. +</p> + +<p> +We now hear the two vicars of the empire go into their homes. The +friseur’s sole punishment to his wife is a narrative of the whole +affair, and a sight of the hat; while the advocate rewards Lenette with +the kiss which she had refused to other lips. If her story did not +please him, the teller of it did, and on the whole the only thing she +omitted was the flower-wreath, and the allusions made to it. She would +not cloud the happiness of his evening, nor bring back upon him the +pain and the reproaches of that other evening when she had pawned it. +I, like many of my readers, had expected that Lenette would have +received the news of the enthronisation far too coldly; she has +deceived us all; she received it even too joyfully. But there were two +good reasons for this; she had heard of it an hour before, and +consequently the first feminine mourning over a joy had had time to +give place to the joy itself. For women are like thermometers, which on +a sudden application of heat sink at first a few degrees, as a +preliminary to rising a good many. The second reason for her being thus +indulgent and sympathetic was the humiliating consciousness she +possessed of the Venner’s visit, and of the wreath in its hiding-place; +for we are often severe when we are strong, and practise forbearance +when we stand in need of it. +</p> + +<p> +I now wish the entire royal family and household a good night, and a +pleasant awaking in the eighth chapter. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">SCRUPLES AS TO PAYMENT OF DEBTS—THE RICH PAUPER’S SUNDAY +THRONE-CEREMONIAL—ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS ON THE GRAVE—NEW THISTLE +SEEDLINGS OF CONTENTION. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs, a king, and yet a poor’s-advocate and member of a +wood-economising association, arose next morning a man who could lay +forty good florins down upon his table at any hour of the day. The +whole of that forenoon he enjoyed a pleasure which possesses, for the +virtuous and right-thinking, an especial charm—that of paying debts: +firstly, to the Saxon his house-rent, and then to the butchers, bakers, +and other nurses of this needy machine, our body, their little +duodecimo accounts. For he was like the aristocracy who borrow from the +lower classes, not money, but only victuals, just as there are many +judges who are bribeable with the latter, but not with the former. +</p> + +<p> +That he does pay his debts is not a circumstance which should lower him +in the opinion of anybody who remembers that he is a man of very poor +“extraction”—scarcely of any “extraction” at all, in fact. A man of +rank is expected (as a thing becoming his position) <i>not</i> to pay his +debts, for thanks to the papal indulgences granted to his noble +ancestors at the time of the Crusades, he need give his mind no trouble +on the subject of liability, and least of all should liabilities of a +<i>pecuniary</i> nature cause him a thought. To place a man of a high and +delicate sense of honour, a courtier say, under an obligation (<i>e.g</i>. +to lend him money) is to wound his feelings to a greater or less +extent; and a wound of this sort to the feelings is a matter which his +refined sensitive nature naturally leads him to endeavour to forgive; +he will, therefore, do his utmost to drive the injury thus done him, +with all its attendant circumstances, completely out of his mind. +Should the person who inflicted this hurt upon his sense of honour +remind him of it, he will then, with genuine delicacy of feeling, make +as if he were scarcely aware that he had <i>been</i> wounded. Rough young +squires, again, and officers on the march <i>do</i> really pay, and +moreover, they coin (if the expression may be used) for themselves the +money they require, as is the case in Algiers, where every one +possesses the privilege of minting. In Malta there is current a +leathern coin of the value of eightpence, on which is the legend “Non +As, sed Fides.” With leather money of a somewhat different description, +not circular in shape, but drawn out to some length, more like that of +the ancient Spartans (and, indeed, this sort of money usually gets the +appellation of dog-whips or riding-whips), the landed gentry and people +of village nobility pay their coachmen, Jews, carpenters, and others to +whom they owe money—<i>going on</i> paying them, in fact, until they are +quite satisfied. Indeed I once stood at table and saw officers, men +most tenacious of their honour, take their swords from the wall or from +their sides, and therewith, when the boots asked for his money, pay him +in the true currency of antiquity (among the brave Spartans, also, +weapons were money), so that, in fact, the fellow’s jacket got a better +brushing than most of the boots for cleaning which he wanted to be +paid. And looking at the matter all round, ought it <i>really</i> to be +accounted a grave offence in military personages, even of the highest +rank, to pay their small debts? So that often, when some wretched +tailor asks for metal, they take the iron ell-measure from him, and +(while, moreover, applying to <i>him</i> in person the very measure which he +applied to their furs) press—not perhaps <i>into</i> his hands, but <i>on</i> +to +a part of his body on which “contour” lines might be drawn—not mere +coins, or bills on approved security, but a metal which Peru with all +its wealth does not boast the possession of, the aforesaid iron +to wit? In Sumatra the skulls of the enemy are their Louis d’ors and +head-pieces, and even <i>this</i> species of currency—the hostile head of +the tradesman who has furnished goods—is often taken by the nobler +creditor, just by way of satisfying him “in full of all demands.” +Neither in the Clausular Jurisprudence nor in the most recent Prussian +code is it enacted that a creditor is to stipulate in his bill which +species of currency he elects to be paid in by his noble debtor, the +metallic currency or the castigatory. +</p> + +<p> +On this Thursday morning Siebenkæs had a tough and ticklish argument, +or piece of special pleading, to go through on the subject of the +half-heart or (half-pig) of the cardinal protector, which his co-king, +the hairdresser, pressed the acceptance of upon him, by way of making +more sure of duly sharing all the prizes which appertained to the +king’s shot himself. But his having gained the twenty-five florin prize +did not add to the warmth of his arguments, and at last he agreed to +the arrangement that the animal should be eaten, pure and clean, like a +passover lamb, next Sunday in Siebenkæs’s room by the lodgers +generally, and by the two rifle kings with their queens in company with +Schulrath Stiefel. The flower goddess of the days of man took at this +juncture a fingertipful or two of seeds of quickly blooming and quickly +fading flowers (such as like the hellebore come into blossom in our +December) and sowed them beside the path which Firmian’s steps most +often trod. Ah, happy man, how soon will these forced blossoms fall +from your days. Will not your philosophic Diana-and-bread-fruit tree +(which takes the place, in your case, of an oak of lamentation) fare +like the cut plants which people put in lime-water in their chambers on +St. Andrew’s Day, and which, after a hurried outburst of yellowish +leaves and feeble dingy flowers, fade and perish for good and all? +</p> + +<p> +Sleep, riches, and health, to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted; it +is only during the first few days after the burden of poverty or +sickness has been lifted from a man’s shoulders, that the upright +posture, and the free breath, cause their fullest measure of delight. +These days lasted for our Firmian until the Sunday. He built a whole +cubic-foot of his Devil rampart (in his ‘Selection from the Devil’s +Papers’), he wrote reviews, he wrote law papers, he kept a careful eye +on the maintenance of the household truce (liable to be disturbed by +the question of the redemption of the pawned furniture). I shall treat +of this matter firstly, before proceeding to give an account of the +Platonic banquet of the Sunday. On Firmian’s coronation-day he invested +twenty-one florins in a watch, with the view of avoiding frittering +away his money by driblets; he thought it well to cast an anchor of +hope into his watch-pocket. Then, when his wife talked of redeeming the +salad-bowl, the herring-dish, and other pledges a matter involving not +kisses only but half of his capital—he would say, “I’m not in favour +of it, old Sabel would very soon have to carry them off again; however, +if you’re determined, pray have them out, I shall not interfere.” If he +had offered any opposition, back they would have had to come; but, +inasmuch as he poured the greater portion of his cash into her money +bag, and as she marked its daily ebb—and as she could go and redeem +the furniture any day—why for that very reason she let it alone. Women +are fond of putting off, men of pushing on; with the former, patience +most speedily gains us our point; with the latter (ministers of the +crown for instance) <i>im</i>patience. I here once more remind all German +husbands, who have any pledge they do not wish to redeem, how to deal +with their fair registers. +</p> + +<p> +Every morning she said, “Ah! we really must send and get back our +plates,” to which he as regularly antiphonated, “<i>I</i> don’t think so; I +praise you rather for not doing it.” And in this manner he caused his +own desire to assume the form of another person’s desert. Firmian +understood some individual specimens of humanity, but not humanity as a +class, in its broad sense; he was embarrassed with every woman at +first, while her acquaintance was new, though not so afterwards when he +came to know her better; he knew exactly how one <i>ought</i> to talk, walk, +and stand, in “society,” but he never put this knowledge in practice; +he took accurate note of all outward and inward awkwardness of other +people, but yet retained all his own; and after treating his +acquaintances for years with the airs of a superior, experienced man of +the world accustomed to “society,” he would suddenly find, on some +occasion of his being from home, that, unlike a true man of the world, +he had no effect or influence whatever on people to whom he was a +stranger; to make a long tale short, he was a man of letters. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, however, before the Sunday came, notwithstanding all the +peace-sermons and peace-treaties in his heart, he found that he had +plumped, before he knew where he was, right into the thick of a +household battle of the frogs and mice once more, which occurred as +follows:—It is matter of history, derived from his own statement, +that, as Lenette kept on ceaselessly washing her hands and arms, as +well as other things by the hundred (although, for the most part, +with cold water, it being impossible to have warm water continually +ready)—that, I say, he simply asked, in the gentlest tone in the +world, the kindly and half-playful question, “Doesn’t that cold water +give you cold?” She answered “No,” in a <i>sostenuto</i> voice. “Perhaps +<i>warm</i> water would be more likely to do so, would it?” he continued. +Her answer was, “Yes, it would,” delivered in a snapping <i>staccato</i>. +Moralists and psychologists, who may be a good deal surprised at this +half-angry answer to a question so innocent, are, contrary to my +expectations, far behindhand in their knowledge of psychology in +general, and the psychology of this tale in particular. Lenette knew by +experience that the advocate, like Socrates, generally opened his +battles in the most dulcet tones, as the Spartans commenced theirs to +the sound of flutes, and, in fact, continued them in the same strain, +that, like the said Spartans, he might retain complete command of +himself. She therefore dreaded that, on this occasion also, his +flute-text might usher in a declaration of war against the feminine +form of government, of which the various provinces of work are divided +one from another by washing-waters, as the judicial districts of modern +Bavaria are by rivers. +</p> + +<p> +“What key is a husband to play his tune in, I ask you all!” the +advocate would often cry with curses, “since, whether he takes it in +the major or in the minor, or plays piano or forte, it seems all the +same in the end?” +</p> + +<p> +On the present occasion, however, all he was aiming at, his gentleness +of demeanour notwithstanding, was a preface to a proper system of +educating or training the bodies of children. For after her answer he +went on to say, “I am delighted to hear you say so. If we had children, +I see you would be continually washing them, and with cold water, too, +over their whole bodies, and this would invigorate them and make them +strong and hardy, since, as you say, it produces warmth.” Her only +answer to this was to hold her hands aloft, folded for victory, like +the biblical prophet—for, in her eyes, a cold bathing of children was +a Herodian blood-bath. Firmian then developed with much greater +clearness his invigorating system of upbringing, while more and more +strenuously strove his wife against it, with all her feathers ruffled, +till by dint of able exposition on both sides of the respective +masculine and feminine systems of rearing, they had nearly reached a +point where they would have clashed together, like a couple of summer +thunderclouds, had not he dispelled these by firing the following shot: +“Good heavens! have <i>we</i> any children? Why should we make fools of +ourselves in this way about the matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“I was speaking of other people’s children,” was Lenette’s reply. +</p> + +<p> +Consequently, as I said above, war did <i>not</i> break out, but, on the +other hand, the morning of the Sabbath of peace brake in, and with it +came the guests who were bent upon possessing themselves of (and +eating) the warm and divided heart, or pig, of the Babylonish harlot, +or Cardinal Protector. It seemed, in fact, as if some happy star of the +wise men of the East must be standing in the heavens above this +houseful of recipients of out-door relief, for there had, by good luck, +been a gale of wind on the previous Friday which had blown down some +half of the Government forest and strewn the path to Advent, for the +poor, so grandly with branches (and the trees attached) that the entire +staff of forest officials could not hinder the ingathering of such a +vintage. For many a long year the Morbitzer’s house hadn’t boasted +anything approaching to such a stock of timber, part of it purchased, +part adroitly collected. +</p> + +<p> +And if every Sunday is—in a poor man’s quarters—in itself and in the +nature of things, not only a sun-day, but a moon-and-stars-day into the +bargain a day when a poor fellow has his mouthful or two of food, his +trifle or two of good clothes, his twelve hours for eating and twelve +for lying down, besides the necessary neighbours to talk with—it may +be conjectured in what a superlative sort this particular Sunday dawned +upon the Morbitzer household, where everybody was as sure of eating his +share of the pig in the afternoon as of hearing the sermon in the +morning, and with as little to pay for the one as for the other, seeing +that it was a settled matter that the lodger of greatest dignity in the +establishment had determined that his coronation feast should be +celebrated nowhere but there, at the table with mere working men. +</p> + +<p> +Old Sabel was on the spot before the earliest church-bell had begun to +toll. The rifle-king’s crown-treasury could afford to appoint her +hereditary mistress of the kitchen, under Lenette, for a kreuzer or two +and a plate or so of victuals; but the queen looked upon her as a +superfluity and coadjutor, or auxiliary queen. A king on the chessboard +gets two queens whenever a mere ordinary pawn gets moved on to the +place of royalty, one of the royal squares (though he has not lost his +first consort); and indeed it is just the same when it happens under +the canopy of a throne. Lenette, however, would have preferred to have +washed, cooked, and served the meats with her own unassisted hands, +like a true Homeric or Carlovingian princess. The marksman-monarch +himself fled the noisy, dusty throne-scaffold of the day, and in a +loose old coat, happy and free, he rambled about the broad green levels +of the quiet, blue, latter autumn, checked by no interfering dry stems +or straw sheaves standing sentry on the plain, and bursting no thicker +barrier-chains than the webs of the spiders. Never do husbands more +happily and tranquilly take their walks abroad—out in the open +country, or, indeed, up and down in other people’s rooms—than when, in +their own, the stamping-mills, the sugar and fanning-mills are at +work, whirling and roaring, and they promise themselves, at their +home-coming, the clean, finished product and outcome of all these +mill-wheels. Siebenkæs glanced with a poet’s idyllic eye from his quiet +meadow into the distant noise-chamber, full of pans, choppers, and +besoms, and found true and deep delight in a peaceful contemplation of +the whirl of backwards and forwards assiduity going on there, and in +picturing to himself and joining in, the pleasant tongue-visions of the +hungry guests, till suddenly he grew red and hot. “You’re doing a fine +thing!” he said, addressing himself; “<i>I</i> could do that, myself, too! +But there’s the poor wife scrubbing and cooking herself to death at +home, and nobody giving her even a thought of thanks.” And the least he +could do was to vow, on the spot, that however he might find things +moved about and “put in order” in the house on his return, he would +accept and belaud it all without a word of demur. +</p> + +<p> +And history vouches, to his honour, for the fact that when, on his +reaching the house, he found his bookshelves dusted and his inkpot +washed white on the outside, and all his belongings “put in order”—(in +a <i>different</i> order to the previous one, be it observed),—he at once +praised Lenette in the kindest manner, without a shade of irritation, +and said she had performed her household processes and accomplished her +cleaning and brushing in a manner quite after his heart, for that it +was impossible to be <i>too</i> exquisitely neat and spick and span in the +eyes of commonplace women, particularly such as composed the infernal +triumvirate who were to be present that day (<i>i. e</i>. the bookbinder’s, +the barber’s, and the shoemaker’s wives); and on that account he had +left the intendance-general of the theatre of operations entirely to +her—whereas, in the case of scholars, like Stiefel and himself, the +room might be turned into a complete English scouring, carding, and +brushing apparatus—for men of their sort never glanced down at trifles +of that description from their sublime heights of mental contemplation. +</p> + +<p> +But how pleasantly and cheerily did the president of the eating +congress put all things in train by this his kindly temper, even before +the assembling of the congress; though this appeared most fully after +it <i>had</i> assembled. When the thirteen United States, by their thirteen +deputies, dine together at a round table to celebrate some arrangement +which they have jointly arrived at (and that they do so at least, +establishes the fact that when thirteen dine at a table the thirteenth +does not necessarily die), it is an easy matter for the thirteen free +states in question, paying, as they do, the expenses out of thirteen +treasuries, to treat their delegates as liberally as Firmian treated +his guests. It is pleasant to look at cattle grazing in the meadows, +but not so pleasant to see Nebuchadnezzar conducting himself like one +of them; and similarly it is repulsive to see a man of cultivation +pasturing with a too eager delight on the stomach’s meadow, the +dinner-table (though it is not so in the case of the poor). Firmian’s +guests were all of one mind, even the married couples; for it is a +leading characteristic of the lower classes that they enter into a +dozen treaties of peace and make as many declarations of war, in the +course of the four-and-twenty hours, and particularly that they ennoble +each of their meals into a feast of love and reconciliation. Firmian +saw in the lower classes a kind of standing troupe of actors playing +Shakespeare’s comedies, and thousands of times fancied that the +dramatist himself was prompting them unseen. He had long coveted the +pleasure of having some enjoyment or other of which he could give away +some portion to the poor; he envied those rich Britons who pay the +score of a beershop full of labourers, or, like Cæsar, give free +commons to an entire town. The poor who <i>have</i> houses give to the poor +who have not—one lazzarone gives to another—as shell-fish become the +habitations of other crustaceans, and earthworms are the habitable +universes of lesser worms. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening arrived Peltzstiefel, who was too learned a man to eat +swine’s flesh, or a measure of salt, among the untaught vulgar. And +then Siebenkæs could once more entertain an idea unintelligible to any +one but Stiefel. He could lay the sceptre and the tinted glass-ball of +the imperial globe upon the table, and in his capacity of king of the +feast and of the eagle, say that his long hair served him for a crown, +like that of the old Frank kings, his own crown having been knocked +down by his landlord’s rifle; he could assert that the rule by which +only he by whose hands the eagle was brought down became king was +clearly imitated from the code of the Fraticelli Berghadi, who could +only elect to the papacy a person who had killed a child. That ’twas +true he had it not in his power to reign over Kuhschnappel so long by +fourteen days as the King of Prussia over the ecclesiastical see of +Elten (the latter period being one of <i>fifteen</i> days)—that ’twas true +he had a crown and revenues, but the latter were sadly reduced, cut +down by one-half, in fact—and that he was far too much like the Great +Mogul, who formerly had an income of two hundred and twenty-six +millions a year, but now receives only the one hundred and thirteenth +part of that sum; however, at his (Siebenkæs’s) coronation, though +there had been no general liberation of the <i>wicked</i> prisoners, yet +<i>one good</i> one had been released, namely, himself; also that, like +Peter the Second of Arragon, he had been crowned with nothing worse +than bread: finally that, under his ephemeral rule, nobody was +beheaded, robbed, or beaten to death; and—which delighted him most of +all—the feeling that he was like one of the ancient German princes, +who governed, defended, and increased a free people, and was a member +of that free people himself, &c. &c. +</p> + +<p> +The throats in this royal chamber grew louder and drier as the evening +advanced; the pipes (those chimneys of the mouth) made of the room a +heaven of clouds, and of their heads heavens of joy. Outside, the +autumn sun brooded, with warm, flaming wings, over the cold, naked +earth, as if in haste to hatch the spring. The guests had drawn the +quint, (I mean the five prizes of the five senses) out of the ninety +numbers, or ninety years of the lottery of human life; the famished +eyes were sparkling, and in Firmian’s soul the buds of gladness had +burst their leaflet envelopes and swelled forth into flower. Deep +happiness always leads love by the hand; and Firmian longed to-day, +with an unutterable longing, to press his heart, all heavy with bliss, +upon Lenette’s breast, and there forget all his wants and hers. +</p> + +<p> +These circumstances, in their combination, inspired him with a strange +idea. He determined, on this happy day, to go and redeem the pawned +silken flower-wreath and plant it in some dark spot out of doors, then +take her out there in the evening, or perhaps even in the night, and +give her a pleasant little surprise at the sight of it. He slipped out +and took his way to the pawnbroker’s; but—as all our resolves begin in +us as tiny sparks, and end in broad lightning flashes—so, as he went, +he improved his original idea (of redeeming the wreath from pawn) into +an altogether different one, that of buying real flowers and planting +<i>them</i> by way of goal of the nocturnal ramble. There was no difficulty +in getting red and white roses from the greenhouse of a gardener of the +Prince of Oettingen-Spielberg, who had lately come to the place. He +walked round under the upright glass roofs, all behung with blossom, +went to the gardener and got what he wanted—only no forget-me-nots, +for these, of course, the man had left the meadows to supply. But +forget-me-nots were indispensable, to make the loving surprise +complete. He therefore took his real autumn flowers to the pawnbroker +woman’s, in whose hands his silk plants had been deposited, that he +might twine the dead, poor, cocoon forget-me-nots among the living +roses. What was his astonishment to learn that the pledge had been +redeemed and taken away by Mr. von Meyern, and that he had paid a sum +of money so considerable that the woman thought she still owed the +advocate a debt of thanks. It needed all the strength of a heart +fortified by love to keep him from going at once to the Venner +with a storm of reproaches for this move of warlike strategy—this +pledge-robbery—for he could scarce endure the thought (a mistaken +idea, ’tis true, only given rise to by Lenette’s silence on the subject +of the garland) of his pure love’s pretty token in Rosa’s beringed and +thievish fingers. The brokeress, too, though she was not to blame, +would have been severely taken to task had it been any other day, one +less full of love and happiness; as it was, however, Firmian cursed in +a merely general manner, especially as the woman gave him silk +forget-me-nots of somebody else’s, when he said he wanted some. When in +the street again, he was at variance with himself as to the spot where +he should plant his flowers; he wished he knew where to find some +fresh-dug bed of fine old mould, of which the dark colour should set +off to advantage the red and blue of the flowers. At length he saw a +field which is broken into beds at all seasons—in summer and in +winter, ay, in the bitterest cold—the churchyard, with its church, +hanging like a vineyard on the slope of a hill beyond the town. He +slipped in by a back entrance and saw the fresh-raised boundary-hillock +which marked the close of an earthly life, rolled, as it were, up to +the foot of the triumphal gate, through which a mother, with her +newborn child in her arms, had passed away into the brighter world. +Upon this earthen bier he laid his flowers down, like a funeral +garland, and then went home. +</p> + +<p> +The members of the gladsome company had scarcely missed him; they were +floating, like fish benumbed in their element saturated with foreign +matter, paralysed with the poison of pleasure; but Stiefel was still in +his senses, and was talking with Lenette. The world has already learned +from the former portion of this history—the people of the house, too, +were well aware—that Firmian was fond of running away from his guests, +in order to throw himself back into their society with a greater zest, +and that he interrupted his pleasures in order that he might savour +them—as Montaigne used to have himself awakened from his sleep that he +might thoroughly appreciate what it was—and so Firmian merely said +that he had been out. +</p> + +<p> +All the waves, even the most turbulent of them, subsided at last, and +there was nothing left in the ebb save those three pearl mussels, our +three friends. Firmian gazed with tender eyes upon Lenette’s bright +ones, for he loved her the more fondly because he had a pleasure in +store for her. Stiefel glowed with a love so pure that, without any +serious error of logic, he was able to define and classify it to +himself as a mere sympathetic rejoicing in her happiness; particularly +as his love for the wife placed wings, not fetters, upon his affection +for her husband. Indeed the Schulrath’s anxiety was directed altogether +to the reverse side of the question, his only doubt being whether he +had it in him to express his love with adequate force and ardour. +Therefore he pressed both their hands many times, and laid them between +his own; he said beauty was a thing to which he very rarely paid any +attention, but that he <i>had</i> been observant of it that day, because +that of Mrs. Siebenkæs had appeared to such great advantage amid all +her labours, particularly with all these ordinary women about her, and +at <i>them</i> he had not so much as looked. He assured the advocate that he +had considered his goodness and kindness to this admirable wife of his +as a mark of increased personal friendship for himself; and he +asseverated to her that his affection for her, of which he had given +some little proof as they came together from Augspurg in the coach, +would grow stronger the more she loved his friend, and through that +friend, himself. +</p> + +<p> +Into this cup of joy of hers Firmian of course cast no drop of poison +relative to (what he <i>supposed</i> to be) the news of the Venner’s having +made prize of the flowers. He was so happy that day; his little toy +crown had so tenderly covered and soothed all the bleeding wounds on +that head of his whence he had lifted his crown of thorns just a little +way (as Alexander’s diadem soothed the bleeding head of Lysimachus), +that his only wish was that the night might be as long as a Polar one, +since it was just as calm and peaceful, as bright and serene. In +moments like these the poison fangs of all our troubles are broken out, +and a Paul, like him in Malta of old, has turned all the tongues of the +soul’s serpents to stone. +</p> + +<p> +When Stiefel rose to go, Firmian did not detain him, but insisted that +he should allow them both to go with him, not to their own door only, +but to his. They went out. The broad heaven, with the streets of the +City of God all lit with the lamps which are suns, drew them on, out +beyond the narrow crossways of the town, and into the great spectacle +hall of night, where we breathe the blue of heaven, and drink the east +breeze. We should conclude and sanctify all our chamber feasts by +“going to church” in that cool, vast temple, that great cathedral whose +dome is adorned with the sacred picture of the Most Holy, portrayed in +a mosaic of stars. They roamed on refreshed and exalted by breezes of +the coming spring hastening to blow before their appointed time, those +breezes which wipe the snow away from the mountains. All nature gave +promise of a mild winter—to lead the poor, who have no fuel, gently +through the darkest quarter of the year—it was a season such as none +curse except the rich, who can order sleighs but not snow. +</p> + +<p> +The two men carried on a conversation befitting the sublimity of the +night; Lenette said nothing. Firmian said, “How near together these +miserable oyster banks, the villages, seem to be, and how small they +are; when we go from one of these villages to another the journey seems +to us about the same in length as a mite’s, if it crawled on a map from +the name of the one to the name of the other, might appear to it. And +to higher spirits our earth-ball may perhaps be a globe for their +children, which their tutor turns and explains.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet,” said Stiefel, “there may very possibly be worlds even smaller +than this earth of ours; and, after all, there <i>must</i> be something in +ours since the Lord Christ died for it.” At this the warm blood rushed +to Lenette’s heart. Firmian merely answered, “More Saviours than one +have died for this world and mankind, and I am convinced that Christ +will one day take many a good man by the hand, and say, ‘<i>You</i> have +suffered under your Pontius Pilate too!’ And for that matter many a +seeming Pilate is very likely a Messiah, if the truth were known.” +Lenette’s secret dread was that her husband was really an absolute +Atheist, or at all events a “philosopher.” +</p> + +<p> +He led them by snaky windings and corkscrew paths to the churchyard; +but suddenly his eyes grew moist, as one’s do when passing through a +thick mist, when he thought of the mother’s grave with the flowers on +it, and on Lenette who gave no sign of ever becoming one. He strove to +expel the sadness from his heart by philosophic speeches. He said human +beings and watches stop while they are being wound up for a new long +day; and that he believed that those dark intervals of sleep and +death, which break up and divide our existence into segments, prevent +any one particular idea from getting to glare too brightly, and our +never-cooling desires from searing us wholly—and oven our ideas from +interflowing into confusion—just as the planetary systems are +separated by gloomy wastes of space, and the solar systems by yet +greater gulfs of darkness. That the human spirit could never take in +and contain the endless stream of knowledge which flows throughout +eternity, but that it sips it by portions at a time, with intervals +between: the eternal day would blind our souls were it not broken into +separate days by midsummer nights (which we call, now sleep, now +death), framing its noons in a border of mornings and evenings. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette was frightened, and would have liked to run away behind the +wall and not go into the churchyard; however, she had to go in. +Firmian, holding her closely to him, took a roundabout path to the +place where the wreath was. He closed the little clattering metal gates +which guarded the pious verses and the brief life-careers. They came to +the better-class graves nearest the church, which lay round that +fortress like a kind of moat. Here there were nothing but upright +monuments standing over the quiet mummies below, while further on were +mere trapdoors let down upon recumbent human beings. A bony head, which +was sleeping in the open air, Firmian set a-rolling, and—heedless +of Lenette’s oft-renewed entreaties to him not to make himself +“unclean”—he took up in both his hands this last capsule case +of a spirit of many dwelling places, and, looking into the empty +window-openings of the ruined pleasure-house, said, “They ought to get +up into the pulpit inside there at midnight, and put this scalped mask +of our Personality down upon the desk in place of the Bible and the +hourglass, and preach upon it as a text to the <i>other</i> heads sitting +there still packed in their skins. They should have <i>my</i> head, if they +liked to skin it after my decease, and hook it up in the church like a +herring’s, upon a string, by way of angel at the font—so that the +silly souls might for once in their lives look <i>upward</i> and then +<i>downward</i>—for we hang and hover between heaven and the grave. The +hazel-nut worm is still in <i>our</i> heads, Herr Schulrath, but it has gone +through its transformation and flown out from this one, for there are +two holes in it and a kernel of dust.”<a name="div2Ref_51" href="#div2_51"><sup>[51]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Lenette was terrified at this godless jesting in such close proximity +to ghosts; yet it was but a disguised form of mental exaltation. All at +once she whispered, “There’s something looking down at us over the top +of the charnel house. See, see, it’s raising itself higher up.” It was +only the evening breeze lifting a cloud higher; but this cloud had the +semblance of a bier resting on the roof, and a hand was stretched forth +from it, while a star, shining close to the cloud’s edge, seemed like a +white flower laid on the heart of the form which lay upon the bier of +cloud. +</p> + +<p> +“It is only a cloud,” said Firmian; “come nearer to the house, and then +we shall lose sight of it.” This furnished him with the best possible +pretext for leading her up to the blooming Eden in miniature upon the +grave. When they had walked some twenty paces, the bier was hidden by +the house. “Dear me,” said the Rath, “what may that be in flower +there?” “Upon my life,” cried Firmian, “white and red roses, and +forget-me-nots, wife.” She looked tremblingly, doubtingly, inquiringly +at this resting-place of a heart, decked with a garland, at this altar +with the sacrifice lying beneath it. “Very well then, Firmian,” she +cried, “I’m sure I can’t help it, it is no fault of mine; but <i>oh</i>! you +<i>shouldn’t</i> have done such a thing! oh dear! oh dear! will you <i>never</i> +cease tormenting me!” She began to weep, and hid her streaming eyes on +Stiefel’s arm. +</p> + +<p> +For she, who was so delicately clever in nothing as in touchiness and +taking umbrage, supposed this garland was the silken one from her +wardrobe, and that her husband knew that Rosa had presented it to her, +and had placed the flowers upon this grave of a woman, dead in +childbed, in mockery either of her childlessness or of herself. These +mutual misunderstandings were to the full as confounding to him as to +her; he had to combat <i>her</i> errors, and at the same time ask himself +what his <i>own</i> consisted of. It was only now that she told him that +Rosa had some time since returned the pawned wreath to her. Upon the +green thistle-plant of mistrust of her love, a flower or two now came +out; nothing is more painful than when a person whom we love hides +something from us for the first time, were it but the merest trifle. It +was a great distress and disappointment to Firmian that the pleasant +surprise he had prepared should have taken such a bitter turn. There +was too much of the artificial about his garland to commence with, but +the foul fiend, Chance, had malevolently crisped and twirled it up, +with added weeds, into a more unreal and unnatural affair than ever. +Let us take care then not to hire Chance into the heart’s service. +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath, at his wits’ end, gave vent to his embarrassment in a +warm curse or two upon the Venner’s head; he tried to establish a peace +congress between the husband and wife (who were sunk in silent musing), +and strongly urged Lenette to give her hand to her husband and be +reconciled to him. But nothing would induce her. Yet, after long +hesitation, she agreed to do it, but only on condition that he would +first <i>wash</i> his hands. Hers shrunk away in convulsive loathing from +touching those which had been in contact with a skull. +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath took away the battle-flag from them, and delivered a +peace-sermon which came warm from his heart. He reminded them what the +place was in which they stood, surrounded by human beings all gone to +their last account; he bade them think for a moment how near they were +to the angels who guard the graves of the just, the very mother (he +pointed out) who was mouldering at their feet, with her baby in her +arms (and whose eldest son he himself was bringing along in his Latin +studies—he was then in Scheller’s <i>principia</i>), might be said to be +admonishing them not to fall out about a flower or two over her quiet +grave, but rather to take them away as olive-branches of peace. +Lenette’s heart drank <i>his</i> theologic holy water with far greater zest +than Firmian’s pure, philosophic Alp water, and the latter’s lofty +thoughts of Death shot athwart her soul without the slightest +penetration. However, the sacrifice of reconciliation was accomplished +and mutual letters of indulgence exchanged. At the same time, a peace +like this, brought about by a third party, is always something in the +nature of a mere suspension of hostilities. Strangely enough they both +awoke in the morning with tears in their eyes, but could not tell +whether happy dreams or sad ones had left these drops behind. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_flower1"></a>FIRST FLOWER PIECE.</h2> + +<h3>THE DEAD CHRIST PROCLAIMS THAT THERE IS NO GOD.<br/> +<br/> +INTRODUCTION.</h3> + +<p> +My aim in writing this fiction must be my excuse for its audacity. +</p> + +<p> +Men, as a class, deny God’s existence with about the same small +amount of true consideration, conviction, and feeling as that +with which most individual men admit it. Even in our regularly +established <i>systems</i> of belief we form collections of mere words, +game-counters, medallions—just as coin-collectors accumulate +cabinetsful of coins—and not till long after our collection is made do +we convert the words into sentiments, the coins into enjoyments. We +may believe in the immortality of the soul for twenty years long, yet +it may be the twenty-first before, in some one supreme moment, we +suddenly perceive, to our astonishment, what this belief involves, and +how wonderful is the warmth of that naphtha spring. +</p> + +<p> +In a similar manner to this, I myself was suddenly horror-struck at the +perception of the poison-power of that vapour which strikes with such +suffocating fumes to the heart of him who enters the school of +Atheistic doctrine. It would cause me less pain to deny immortality +than to deny God’s existence. In the former case, what I lose is but a +world hidden by clouds; but in the latter, I lose this present world, +that is to say, its sun. The whole spiritual universe is shattered and +shivered, by the hand of Atheism, into innumerable glittering +quicksilver globules of individual personalities, running hither and +thither at random, coalescing, and parting asunder without unity, +coherence, or consistency. In all this wide universe there is none so +utterly solitary and alone as a denier of God. With orphaned heart—a +heart which has lost the Great Father—he mourns beside the +immeasurable corpse of Nature, a corpse no longer animated or held +together by the Great Spirit of the Universe—a corpse which grows in +its grave; and by this corpse he mourns until he himself crumbles and +falls away from it into nothingness. The wide earth lies before such +an one like the great Egyptian sphinx of stone, half-buried in the +desert sand; the immeasurable universe has become for him but the cold +iron-mask upon an eternity which is without form and void. +</p> + +<p> +I would also fain awaken, with this piece of fiction, some alarm in the +hearts of certain masters and teachers (reading, as well as <i>read</i>); +for, in truth, these men (now that they have come to do their appointed +day’s work, like so many convicts, in the canal-diggings and in the +mine-shaft excavations, of the “critical” schools of philosophy) +discuss God’s existence as cold-bloodedly and chill-heartedly as though +it were a question of the existence of the kraken or the unicorn. +</p> + +<p> +For others, who have not progressed quite so far as this I would +further remark, that the belief in immortality may without +contradiction, co-exist with the belief in Atheism, for the self-same +necessity which, in this life, placed my little shining dew-drop of a +personality in a flower-cup and beneath a sun, can certainly do the +same in a second life—ay, and could embody me with still greater ease +for a second time than for the first. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +When, in our childhood, we are told that, at midnight, when our sleep +reaches near the soul and darkens our very dreams, the dead arise from +theirs, and in the churches ape the religious services of the living, +we shudder at death, because of the dead, and in the loneliness of +night we turn our eyes in terror from the tall windows of the silent +church, and dread to look at their pale shimmer to see whether it be +truly the reflection of the moon’s beams—or <i>something else</i>! +</p> + +<p> +Childhood and its terrors (even more than its pleasures) assume, in our +dreams, wings and brightness, shining glowworm-like in the dark night +of the soul. Extinguish not these little flickering sparks! Leave us +the dim and painful dreams even; they serve to make life’s high-lights +all the more brilliant. And what will ye give us in exchange for the +dreams which raise and bear us up from beneath the roar of the falling +cataract back to the peaceful mountain-heights of childhood, where the +river of life was flowing as yet in peace, reflecting heaven upon its +little surface, on towards the precipices of the future course. +</p> + +<p> +Once on a summer evening I was lying upon a quiet hillside in the sun. +I fell asleep, and dreamed that I awoke in a churchyard. The rattle of +the wheels of the clock running down as it was striking eleven, had +awakened me. I looked for the sun in the dark and void night sky, for I +supposed that some eclipse was hiding it with the moon. And all the +graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house kept opening +and shutting, moved by invisible hands. Athwart the walls shadows went +flitting; but no bodies cast those shadows and there were others, too, +moving about out in the open air. Within the open coffins there were +none now asleep, except the children. Nothing was in the sky but sultry +fog, heavy and grey, ranging there in great clammy folds; and some +gigantic shadow closed and closed this fog as in a net, and drew it +ever nearer, closer, and hotter. Up overhead I heard the thunder of +distant avalanches, and beneath my feet the first footfalls of a +boundless earthquake. The church was heaved and shaken to and fro by +two terrific discords striving in it, beating in stormy effort to +attain harmonious resolution. Now and then a greyish glimmer passed +with rapid gleam flittering athwart the windows; but, whenever this +glimmer came, the lead and iron of the frames always melted and ran +rolling down. The fog’s net, and the quaking of the earth, drove me +into the temple, past gleaming, glittering basilisks, brooding in +poison-nests beside the door. I passed among shadows, strange and +unknown to me; but they all bore the impress of the centuries. These +shadows stood all grouped about the altar, and their breasts quivered +and throbbed—their <i>breasts</i> but not their hearts. There was but one +of the dead still lying on his pillow, and he was one who had but just +been buried in the church; he lay at peace, his breast without a throb, +a happy dream upon his smiling face. But now, as I came in (I, one of +the living), his sleep broke, he awoke, and smiled no more; with +painful effort he raised his heavy eyelids—and there was no eye +beneath—and in his beating breast there was no heart, but a deep wound +instead. He raised his hands, folded as it for prayer; but then his +arms shot out and came apart from his poor trunk, the folded hands came +off and fell away. Upon the dome above there was inscribed the dial of +eternity—but figures there were none, and the dial itself was its own +gnomon; a great black finger was pointing at it, and the dead strove +hard to read the time upon it. +</p> + +<p> +And at this point a lofty, noble form, bearing the impress of eternal +sorrow, came sinking down towards our group, and rested on the altar; +whereupon all the dead cried out, “Christ! Is there no God?” +</p> + +<p> +He answered, “There is none.” +</p> + +<p> +At this the dead quivered and trembled; but now it was not their +breasts alone that throbbed; the quivering ran all through the shadows, +so that one by one the shudder shook them into nothingness. And Christ +spake on, saying, “I have traversed the worlds, I have risen to the +suns, with the milky ways I have passed athwart the great waste spaces +of the sky; there is no God. And I descended to where the very shadow +cast by Being dies out and ends, and I gazed out into the gulf beyond, +and cried, ‘Father, where art Thou?’ But answer came there none, save +the eternal storm which rages on, controlled by none; and towards the +west, above the chasm, a gleaming rainbow hung, but there was no sun to +give it birth, and so it sank and fell by drops into the gulf. And when +I looked up to the boundless universe for the Divine eye, behold, it +glared at me from out a socket, empty and bottomless. Over the face of +chaos brooded Eternity, chewing it for ever, again and yet again. +Shriek on, then, discords, shatter the shadows with your shrieking din, +for <span class="sc">He is not</span>!” +</p> + +<p> +The pale and colourless shades flickered away to nothingness, as frosty +fog dissolves before warm breath, and all grew void. Ah! then the dead +children, who had been asleep out in the graves, awoke, and came into +the temple, and fell down before the noble form (a sight to rend one’s +heart), and cried, “Jesus, have we no Father?” He made answer, with +streaming tears, “We are orphans all, both I and ye. We have no +Father.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the discords clashed and clanged more harshly yet; the shivering +walls of the temple parted asunder, and the temple and the children +sank—the earth and sun sank with them—and the boundless fabric of the +universe sank down before us, while high on the summit of immeasurable +nature Jesus stood and gazed upon the sinking universe, besprent with +thousand suns, and like a mine dug in the face of black eternal night; +the suns being miners’ lamps, and the milky way the veins of silvery +ore. +</p> + +<p> +And as he gazed upon the grinding mass of worlds, the wild torch dance +of starry will-o’-the-wisps, and all the coral banks of throbbing +hearts—and saw how world by world shook forth its glimmering souls on +to the Ocean of Death—then He, sublime, loftiest of finite beings, +raised his eyes towards the nothingness and boundless void, saying, “Oh +dead, dumb, nothingness! necessity endless and chill! Oh! mad +unreasoning Chance—when will ye dash this fabric into atoms, and me +too? Chance, knowest thou—thou knowest not—when thou dost march, +hurricane-winged, amid the whirling snow of stars, extinguishing sun +after sun upon thy onward way, and when the sparkling dew of +constellations ceases to gleam, as thou dost pass them by? How every +soul in this great corpse-trench of an universe is utterly alone? <i>I</i> +am alone—none by me—O Father, Father! where is that boundless breast +of thine, that I may rest upon it? Alas! if every soul be its own +father and creator, why shall it not be its own destroying angel too? +Is this a man still near me? Wretched being! That petty life of thine +is but the sigh of nature, or the echo of that sigh. Your wavering +cloudy forms are but reflections of rays cast by a concave mirror upon +the clouds of dust which shroud your world—dust which is dead men’s +ashes. Look ye down into the chasm athwart the face of which the +ash-clouds float and fly. A mist of worlds rises up from the Ocean of +Death; the future is a gathering cloud, the present a falling vapour. +Dost thou see and know thy earth?” +</p> + +<p> +Here Christ looked downward, and his eyes grew full of tears, and he +spake on, and said, “Alas! I, too, was once of that poor earth; then I +was happy, then I still possessed my infinite Father, and I could look +up from the hills with joy to the boundless heaven, and I could cry +even in the bitterness of death, ‘My Father, take thy Son from out this +bleeding earthly shell, and lift Him to thy heart.’ Alas! too happy +dwellers upon earth, ye still believe in Him. Your sun, it may be, is +setting at this hour, and amid flowers and brilliance, and with tears +ye sink upon your knees, and, lifting up your hands in rapturous joy, +ye cry each one aloud up to the open heavens, ‘Oh Father, infinite, +eternal, hear! Thou knowest <i>me</i> in all my littleness, even as Thou +knowest all things, and Thou seest my wounds and sorrows, and Thou +wilt receive me after death and soothe and heal them all.’ Alas! +unhappy souls! For after death these wounds will <i>not</i> be healed. But +when the sad and weary lays down his worn and wounded frame upon the +earth to sleep towards a fairer brighter morn all truth, goodness and +joy,—behold! he awakes amid a howling chaos, in a night endless and +everlasting; and no morning dawns, there is no healing hand, no +everlasting Father. Oh, mortal, who standest near, if still thou +breathest the breath of life, worship and pray to Him, or else thou +losest Him for evermore.” +</p> + +<p> +And I fell down and peered into the shining mass of worlds, and beheld +the coils of the great serpent of eternity all twined about those +worlds; these mighty coils began to writhe and rise, and then again +they tightened and contracted, folding round the universe twice as +closely as before; they wound about all nature in thousandfolds, and +crashed the worlds together, and crushed down the boundless temple to a +little churchyard chapel. And all grew narrow, and dark, and terrible. +And then a great immeasurable bell began to swing in act to toll the +last hour of Time, and shatter the fabric of the universe to countless +atoms,—when my sleep broke up, and I awoke. +</p> + +<p> +And my soul wept for joy that it could still worship God—my gladness, +and my weeping, and my faith—these were my prayer! And as I rose the +sun was gleaming low in the west, behind the ripe purple ears of corn, +and casting in peace the reflection of his evening blushes over the sky +to where the little moon was rising clear and cloudless in the east. +And between the heaven and the earth, a gladsome, shortlived world was +spreading tiny wings, and, like myself, <i>living</i> in the eternal +Father’s sight. And from all nature round, on every hand, rose +music-tones of peace and joy, a rich, soft, gentle harmony, like the +sweet chime of bells at evening pealing far away. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_flower2"></a>SECOND FLOWER PIECE.</h2> + +<h3>A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.</h3> + +<p> +A sky of glorious and sublime beauty was spread out above this earth; a +rainbow stood in the east, like the circle of eternity: a storm, with +broken wings, passed thundering, as if weary, along by the lightning +conductors, and away through the glowing gate of Eden in the west; the +evening sun gazed after the storm with a brightness tender as if it +shone through tears, resting its glance upon the great triumphal arch +of Nature. All enraptured with the loveliness of the scene, I closed my +eyes, and seeing nothing, save the sun shining warm and glowing through +my lids, listened to the thunder as it died away in the far distance. +And at length the mists of sleep sank down into my soul, and shrouded +all the spring in folds of grey; but soon there came luminous bands of +brightness piercing through the mist, and by-and-by shone many-tinted +lines of beauty, and ere long the dark face of my sleep was painted +with the brilliant pictures of the world of dreams. +</p> + +<p> +And then I thought that I was standing in the second world, and all +about me a dim green grassy plain, which, in the distance, merged into +brighter flowers, and woods of glowing red, and hills so clear that you +could see the lodes of gold within them. Beyond these crystal hills +there glowed a bright rose dawn of morning, with dewy rainbows arching +it all over. All the shining woods were sprent with suns (where earthly +forests would have gleamed with drops of dew); while all the flowers +were draped with nebulæ, as earthly flowers are hung with gossamer. At +times the meadows shook, as waves of motion passed quivering over +them—but this was not because the zephyrs bent the grasses in their +play—it was that passing souls brushed them with unseen wings. I was +invisible in this second world, for there this shell of ours is but a +little shroud, a tiny fleck of fog not yet condensed. +</p> + +<p> +And on the brink of this, the second world, reposed the holy Virgin +near her Son; and she was looking downward to our earth, there as it +floated dwarfed and far beneath, in its pale, feeble spring-time, on +the mighty face of the Ocean of Death. And every wave was tossing it at +will, and its dim light was nothing but the shadow of a shadow. Then +Mary’s heart beat with a yearning pulse, when she beheld the old +beloved world, and all her soul grew tender, and she said, with +brightening glance, “Oh, Son! this heart of mine is full of longing, +and mine eyes with tears, for all these my beloved human friends! Raise +the earth near us, that I once more may look into the eyes of mine own +race, my brothers, and my sisters. Ah! my tears will fall when I behold +the living once again.” +</p> + +<p> +But Christ replied, “The earth is but a dream of many dreams; and thou +must sleep to see these dreams.” +</p> + +<p> +And Mary answered, “I will gladly sleep that I may dream of man.” And +then Christ said, “Say what the dream shall show thee.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh beloved! I would the dream would show me mankind’s love. Love such +as hearts which meet once more in bliss after long painful parting only +know.” +</p> + +<p> +And as she spake it, lo! the angel of Death stood close behind her, and +with closing eyes she sank upon his bosom, which was cold as polar ice. +And then the little earth rose quivering up, but as it neared it paled +and narrowed, and grew more dim and small. The clouds about it parted, +and the cleft mists gave to view the little night in which it lay, and +from a sleeping brook a star or two of the second world were mirrored +back. And all the children lay sleeping on the earth, and all were +smiling—for they had seen Mary appear to them as they slept, in +semblance of a mother. But, in the night, stood one unhappy being, the +power of outward grief almost gone from her, except in sighs which tore +her breaking heart. Even her very tears had ceased to flow. Oh! gaze no +more, sad soul, towards the west, where stands the house of mourning +all behung with funeral crape; nor to the east, upon the grave and +house of death. For this one day, turn thy sad gaze away from that +drear charnel house where the loved corpse is laid, so that the cool +night breeze may fan and wake him from his sleep earlier than if he +were shut up within the narrow grave! Yet, no! bereaved one, gaze thy +fill on thy beloved one while he still is here, and ere he falls to +dust—and steep thy heart deep in the eternal woe. +</p> + +<p> +As then an echo in the lone churchyard began to talk in faint and +murmuring tones, repeating the notes of the low-voiced funeral hymn +that rose within the house of mourning; and this after-song, floating +half-heard in air—as though the dead were chanting low—tore all her +heart in twain; and then her tears found vent and flowed anew, and wild +with sorrow she raised her voice and cried, “For ever silent! oh my +love, my love! Callest thou me once more? oh, speak again—but +once—only this once, once more, to me whom thou hast left for ever! +Ah, no! nothing but silence; no sound except the echo stirring among +the graves. All the poor dead lie deaf beneath, and not a tone comes +from the broken heart.” +</p> + +<p> +But when the mourning hymn ceased of a sudden, and the dying echo from +the graves sung faintly on alone, a tremor seized her, and her very +life shook in the balance; for the echo came nearer and nearer, and +from out the night one of the dead came close. And he stretched forth +his pale and shadowy hand and took her own, saying, “My darling, why is +it that you weep? Where have we been so long? for I have been dreaming +that I had lost you!” But they had not lost each other. From Mary’s +closed lids there fell some happy tears, and ere her son could wipe +those tears away, the earth had sunk back to its place again—and on +its face this happy pair, restored to one another, and in bliss. +</p> + +<p> +Then all at once there rose a spark of fire up from the earth, and +presently a soul hovered all trembling near the second world, as if in +doubt whether to enter there. And Christ a second time raised up the +earth ball, and the bodily frame from whence this soul had winged its +way was lying still on earth, marked with the scars and wounds of a +long life. Beside this fallen leafage of the soul a grey old man was +standing, and, speaking to the corpse, he said, “I am as old as thou; +why must my death be after thine, oh kind and faithful wife? Morning by +morning, evening by evening, now, what can I do but think how deep thy +grave, how far thy form has crumbled on its course to undistinguished +dust, till my time comes to lie and crumble with thee side by side! I +am alone! And <i>what</i> a loneliness is mine! For nothing hears me now. +<i>She</i> cannot hear! Well! well! To-morrow I shall gaze with such a woe +upon her faithful hands and her grey hairs that my poor broken life +must snap and end. Oh, thou All-merciful! end it to-day; spare me that +last great sorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Why should it be that, even in old age, when man has grown so weary and +oppressed, and has descended to the lowest and last of all the steps +that lead him downward to his grave, the spectre, Sorrow, sits so heavy +upon him, bowing his head (where every bygone year has left its special +thorns) to earth with a new despair? +</p> + +<p> +But the Lord Christ sent not the angel of death with the hand of ice; +for he himself looked on the bereaved old man, standing so near him +now, with such a glance of glowing solar warmth that the ripe fruit +broke from the tree. Like sudden flame his soul burst upwards from his +riven heart, and hovering above the second world rejoined that other +soul it loved so well; there knit together in silent close embrace, +like those of old, they trembled downward into Elysium, where no +embrace finds end. And Mary stretched, all love, her hands towards +them, and all joy and rapture from her dream, she cried, “Ah, happy +pair, ye are together now for evermore.” +</p> + +<p> +But now there rose a pillar of red vapour up on high above the hapless +earth, and clung there hiding with its dun folds a battle-field’s loud +roar. At length the smoke parted asunder, and two bleeding men were +seen lying enlocked in each other’s bleeding arms. They were two grand +and glorious friends, and they had sacrificed all to each other, ay! +and their very selves,—but not the Fatherland. “Lay thy wounds upon +mine, beloved friend. The past lies all behind us now, we can be +friends again; thou hast sacrificed me to the Fatherland, as I have +thee. Give me thy heart again, ere it bleeds quite away. Alas! we can +only die together now.” And each gave to his friend his pierced and +wounded heart. But these glorious friends beamed with a lustre such +that Death shrank back, and the great berg of ice, wherewith he crushes +man, melted away at touching their warm hearts. And the earth <i>kept</i> +those two, who rose above her level like two lofty mountains, dowering +her with streams, with healing virtues, and with lofty views, she +giving only <i>clouds</i> to them in return. +</p> + +<p> +Mary in her dream here glanced and bent her head towards her son, for +truly he alone can read, support, and succour hearts like these. +</p> + +<p> +Why does she smile now, like some happy mother? Is it because the earth +she loves so well, still rising nearer, seems to hover close above the +border of the second world, sweet with the flowers of spring, while +nightingales lie brooding, with those burning hearts of theirs pressed +on the grasses and the meadow blooms,—the stormy skies all brightening +into rainbows? Is it because the earth, never to be forgotten of her +heart, now shows so happy and so gay bedecked in its spring dress, +radiant in all its flowers, the joy hymn bursting from all its singers’ +throats? No, not for this alone; that happy smile breaks over her +sleeping face because she sees a mother and her child. For this must be +a mother who bends down and holds her arms wide open, and calls in +sweet enraptured tones, “Come, darling child, come to my heart again.” +This is her child, we see and know, standing all innocence, within the +ringing temple of the spring, by his good genius who teaches him—and +now goes running up to that smiling form—thus early blest, pressed to +that heart overflowing with a mother’s love, scarce understanding the +blissful words she speaks. “Oh, dearest child, how thou delightest me. +Art thou happy too? Thou lovest me! Oh, look at me, my own, and smile +for evermore.” +</p> + +<p> +But now the very blissfulness of her dream woke Mary up; and with a +tender tremor she fell upon her own son’s heart, saying with tears, +“None, save a mother, <i>knows</i> what it is to love.” And as she spoke the +earth sank to its place (where its own æther flowed around its orb), +and with it that glad mother with her arms about her child. +</p> + +<p> +And all this bliss bursting upon my heart dissolved my dream. And I +awoke—but nothing had truly changed or passed away; for the mother of +my dream still clasped her child close to her heart here on earth’s +face; she reads my dream, and, for its truth, forgives, perchance, the +dreamer who tells his tale. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_book3"></a>BOOK III.</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch09"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">A POTATO WAR WITH WOMEN—AND WITH MEN—A WALK IN DECEMBER—TINDER +FOR JEALOUSY—A WAR OF SUCCESSION ON THE SUBJECT OF A PIECE OF +CHECKED CALICO—RUPTURE WITH STIEFEL—SAD EVENING MUSIC. +</p> + +<p> +I should very much like to make an incidental digression about this +point; however, I feel that I don’t dare. +</p> + +<p> +You see there are, now-a-days, so very few readers (at all events, +of the younger and more aristocratic sort) who don’t know +everything—while, at the same time, they expect their pet authors (and +I don’t blame them for it) to know more than themselves—which is +impossible. By the help of the English machinery (now brought to such +high perfection), of encyclopædias, of encyclopædic-dictionaries, of +conversations-lexicons, of excerpts from conversations-lexicons, of +Ersch and Gruber’s ‘Universal Dictionaries of all the Sciences,’ a +young man, after devoting his <i>days</i> to it for a month or two (he has +no occasion to devote his <i>nights</i>) converts himself into a perfect +Senatus Academicus of all the Faculties of a University, which he +represents in his own single person; besides, in a sense, also himself +standing to it in the relation of the student-body at the same time. +</p> + +<p> +I have never, myself, met with a phenomenal youth of the sort above +described, unless it were, perhaps, a fellow I once heard playing in +the Baireuth band, who represented in his own person a whole Royal +Academy of Music—a complete orchestra—inasmuch as he held, carried, +and played upon instruments of every kind. This Panharmonist +performing, to us partial harmonists only (as we were), blew a French +horn, which he held under his right arm, and this right arm bowed a +fiddle placed under his left; and that left arm beat, at the proper +moments, a drum which was fastened on his back; his cap was hung round +with bells, out of which he shook an accompaniment “alla Turca,” by +moving his head, and he had a cymbal strapped upon each of his knees, +which he banged vigorously together; so that the man was all music, +from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot So that, one is +tempted to make this simile-man an occasion and ground-work of further +similes, and liken him to a prince who represents in his own person all +the instruments of his State, and all its members and representatives. +Now, in the presence of readers who are all-knowers, just as this man +was an all-player, how is a humble individual such as I, who am but a +mere Heidelberg master of seven arts, at the outside, and doctor of a +small trifle of philosophy, or so, to venture to take upon himself to +attempt such a thing as a bit of a digression with any approach to the +clever or the felicitous about it? No; the safe course, in the +circumstances, for me is to go quietly on with my story. +</p> + +<p> +We find the advocate, Siebenkæs, once more, then, in full blossom of +hope; although that blossom is all sterile, and not of the sort which +bears fruit. After his royal shot, he had reckoned upon, at any rate, +as many happy days as the money would last for—upon fourteen at least; +but mourning-black, now the traveller’s uniform, ought to have been the +colour of his upon his earthly night-journey—that <i>voyage pittoresque</i> +for poets. Though marmots and squirrels know how to plug up that +particular hole in their dwellings which chances to be on the side from +which the approaching storm is coming, men do not; Firmian thought if +the hole in his <i>purse</i> was mended no more was necessary. Alas! a +better thing than money now departed from him—<i>Love</i>. His good Lenette +receded to a greater distance from his heart, as he did from hers, day +by day. +</p> + +<p> +Her having concealed from him the fact that Rosa had given back the +wreath, formed in his heart (as foreign matter lodged in any vessel of +the body always does) the nucleus of a gradual deposit of stone about +it. But that was only a small matter. +</p> + +<p> +For she brushed and scraped of a morning, and every morning, and that +whether (as the saying goes) he “liked it or lumped it.” +</p> + +<p> +She would persist, and insist, on communicating all her prorogations of +parliament and other decrees to the servant girl, in several duplicates +and revised copies, let him protest as much as he chose. +</p> + +<p> +She asked him every thing she had to ask him (no matter what) two or +three separate times over; and that whether he shouted beforehand like +a quack doctor at a fair, or swore afterwards like one of his +customers. +</p> + +<p> +She continued to say, “It has struck four quarters to four o’clock.” +</p> + +<p> +When he had proved, with immense care and trouble, that Augspurg was +not in the Island of Cyprus, she would return him the quiet +incontrovertible answer, “Well, it’s not in Roumania either, nor in +Bulgaria, nor in the Principality of Jauer, nor in Vauduz, nor in the +neighbourhood of Hüshen—two very little, insignificant places, both of +them.” He could never bring her to give an unqualified assent, when he +made the unconditional and positive assertion (in a loud voice), “It’s +in Swabia—or the devil’s in it.” She would go no further than to admit +that it was situated, in a certain sense, and to some extent, between +Franconia, Bavaria, and Switzerland, &c.; it was only to the +bookbinder’s wife that she would <i>acknowledge</i> that it was in Swabia. +</p> + +<p> +Burdens, nay, overloads, of this sort, however, can be borne more or +less easily and bravely by a soul fortified by the example of great +sufferers—such as a Lycurgus, who let himself be deprived of an eye, +and an Epictetus, who allowed his master to hack off his leg; and all +these little failings of Lenette’s have been touched upon in a previous +chapter. But I have to tell of new shortcomings besides; and as regards +these, I leave it to unbiassed married men to determine whether they +are among the matters which husbands can, and should, put up with. +</p> + +<p> +Firstly: Lenette washed her hands forty times in the course of the day, +at the very least; no matter what she touched, she must needs put +herself through this process of Holy Re-baptism; like a Jew, she was +rendered unclean by the propinquity of <i>everything</i>. She would far more +probably have followed the example of Rabbi Akiba, than have been in +the least astonished at his proceedings—who, when he was a captive in +prison, and in the direst distress for water, instead of quenching his +thirst with the very small quantity of it he could get, preferred to +use it for his ablutions. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it is right and proper that she should be scrupulous about +cleanliness,” said Siebenkæs, “and more so than I am; but there are +limits to all things. Why doesn’t she rub herself with a towel when +anybody breathes upon her? Why not purify her lips with soap after a +fly has deposited itself (and not <i>only</i> itself) upon them? I’m sure +she turns our sitting-room into a regular English man-of-war, scoured +and holystoned from stem to stern every morning; and I look on as +pleased as any officer on her quarter-deck.” +</p> + +<p> +If a heavy Irish rain-cloud, or a waterspout with its attendant +thunders and lightnings, came over his and her days, she always managed +to put her husband right under water (like a Dutch fortress), with all +his courageous energy, and gave free course to all her tears. But when +the sun of happiness cast a feeble ray no broader than a window into +the room, Lenette would always have a hundred things, other than this +pleasant one, to attend to and to look at. Firmian had particularly +made up his mind that he would most thoroughly winnow the husks from +the corn of these few days during which he had a few shillings of ready +money in his pocket; that he would skim off the cream of them, and +completely hide, with a thick veil, the second Janus face, let it be +smiling or weeping over the past or the future, as the case might be; +but Lenette would insist upon rending this veil, and pointing to the +hidden face. “My dear soul!” her husband more than once implored her, +“do but wait till we’re as poor as church mice, and leading the life of +a dog, again; then I’ll groan and moan with you with the greatest +pleasure.” And she only once made him any pertinent answer, namely, +“How long will it be before we’re without a farthing in the house?” But +to this he was able to return a still more apposite reply: “If that is +your way of looking at the matter, you will never be able to enjoy a +single quiet, bright, happy day, unless one can give you his solemn +oath that there will never come another dark, cloudy, wretched one +again; in which case, of course, you can <i>never</i> enjoy one. What king +or emperor—ay! and though he had thrones upon the head of him and +crowns under his tail—can ever be sure but that any post-delivery, or +any sitting of his parliament, may bring him a cloudy time of it; yet +he passes his happy day in his <i>Sans Souci</i>, or his <i>Bellevue</i> (or +whatever he may call it), and enjoys his life.” (She shook her head). +“I can prove it to you in print, and from the Greek.” And, opening the +New Testament, he read out the following passage (inserted by himself +on the spur of the moment): “If, in a time of good fortune and +happiness, thou delayest the joy of thine heart until a moment shall +come in which nothing shall lie before thee save hopes in unbroken +sequence for whole years to come, then there can be no true happiness +on the face of this changing world. For after ten days, or years, some +sorrow shall surely come; and thus thou canst delight in no May-day, +though it shower blossoms and nightingales upon thee, since, beyond all +doubt, the winter will come thereafter, with its nights and its +snowflakes. Yet thou enjoyest thine ardent youth, not thinking with +dread upon the ice-pit of age, which is ready in the background, with a +gradually-increasing coldness to preserve thee for a certain season. +Look, then, upon the glad To-day as a long youth; and let the sad +Day-after-to-morrow appear unto thee but as a brief old age.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Latin or the Greek always has a more religious sound, I know,” she +answered, “and we often hear the thing in the pulpit, too; and whenever +I do hear it preached I always go home and feel much comforted and +consoled, till the money’s all gone again.” +</p> + +<p> +He had greater difficulty still to get her to jump for joy quite to his +liking at the dinner-table at mid-day. If, instead of their every-day +fare, some extraordinary fleshpot of Egypt should chance to be smoking +on the table—some dish such as the Counts of Wratislaw might have +served, and the Counts of Waldstein have carved, without a blush—then +Siebenkæs might be sure that his wife would have at least one hundred +things more than usual to finish and to put away before she could come +to dinner. There sits her husband, eager to begin; he looks round for +her, quietly at first, angrily after a while, but keeps command of +himself for two or three entire minutes, during which he has time to +remember all his troubles as well as think about the roast—then, +however, he discharges the first thunder-clap of his storm, and shouts, +“Thunder and lightning! here have I been sitting for a whole Eternity, +and everything getting as cold as charity. Wife! Wife!!” +</p> + +<p> +In Lenette, as in other women, the cause of this was not ill-temper, +neither was it stupidity, nor stubborn indifference to the matter or to +her husband; she really could not do otherwise, however, and that’s +quite sufficient explanation. +</p> + +<p> +At the same time, my friend Siebenkæs—who will have this story in his +hands even before the printer’s devils get hold of it—musn’t take it +ill of me that I divulge to the world in general certain small +breakfast-failings of his own—which he has communicated to me with his +own lips. As he lay in his trellis-bed in the morning, before getting +up, with his eyes closed, there would suddenly flash upon him ideas for +his book, and forms in which to express them, such as never occurred to +him while he was sitting or standing during the day; and, indeed, I +have in the course of my reading found that there have been many men of +learning—such, for instance, as Descartes, Abbé Galiani, Basedow—I, +myself, too, whom of course I don’t count, who belonged to the +Coleopterous family of backswimmers (<i>Notonectæ</i>), and got on quickest +in the recumbent position, and in whose cases bed has been the +brewing-kettle of their most brilliant and original ideas. I, myself, +could point to many such which I have written down immediately after +getting out of bed in the morning. Any one who sets himself to work to +explain this phenomenon should adduce in the first place the matutinal +power of the brain, and the fact of its lending itself with a more +nimble, as well as vigorous obedience to the impulses of the spirit +after its internal and external holiday of rest; next, the freedom and +facility both of thinking and of brain mobility, which the manifold +impulsions of the day has not yet begun to weary and impair; and, +lastly, the vigour which is a peculiar property of all firstborn +things—a vigour which our earliest morning thoughts possess in common +with the first impressions of youth. +</p> + +<p> +Now, after the above explanations, it will doubtless seem clear that, +when the advocate lay in this fashion, sprouting and sending out long +shoots in the warm forcing-house of the pillow, and bearing the most +precious flowers and fruit, nothing could strike upon his ear in a +harsher and more distracting manner than the voice of Lenette calling +from the next room, “Come to breakfast, the coffee’s ready.” He +generally gave birth to one or two more happy turns of expression after +he <i>did</i> hear it, pricking his ears all the while, however, in dread of +a second order to march. But as Lenette knew that he always allowed +himself a considerable number of minutes of grace after the summons, +she always cried, “Get up, the coffee’s cold,” when it was only just +coming to the boil. The notonectic satirist, for his part, had observed +the law which governed this precession of the equinoxes, and lay +quietly among the feathers breeding his ideas happy and undisturbed +when it was only once that she had summoned him, merely answering, +“This very moment!” and availing himself of the double usance +prescribed by law. +</p> + +<p> +This obliged his wife, for her part, to go farther back, and when the +coffee was made and standing by the fire, to cry, “Come, dear, it’s +getting quite cold.” Now, on this system, of getting earlier on one +side and later on the other, matters became more critical every day, +with nowhere a prospect of extrication from the difficulty; in fact, +what was naturally to be expected was the arrival of a state of things +in which Lenette would end by calling him to get up a whole day too +soon; although, in the end, this would eventuate in a mere restoration +of the original condition of affairs, just as our suppers at the +present day threaten to become too-early breakfasts, and our breakfasts +unfashionably early dinners. Had Siebenkæs been able to bear the +process of grinding the coffee, he might have moored himself to that as +to an anchor of hope, and it would then have been a simple matter to +calculate the time the coffee would take to get ready; but this he +could not, for, in the absence of a coffee-mill, the coffee was bought +ready ground (by everybody in the house, for that matter). If Lenette +could have been induced to call him just one exact minute before the +coffee was boiling and smoking, <i>she</i> would have done instead of the +coffee-mill—however, she could <i>not</i> be induced. +</p> + +<p> +What are trifling differences of opinion before marriage assume large +dimensions thereafter—as north winds are warm in summer and cold in +winter; the zephyr, when it is breathed forth by conjugal lungs, is +like Homer’s zephyr, concerning the biting keenness of which the poet +sings so much. For this period onward, Firmian set himself to look with +much care and minuteness for every crack, feather, flaw, or cloudiness, +which might be discoverable in that diamond—Lenette’s heart. Poor +fellow! this being the case with thee, soon, soon must the crumbling +altar of thy love go toppling down one stone after another, and the +sacrificial fire flutter and go out. +</p> + +<p> +He now discovered that she was not nearly as learned a woman as Mdlles. +Burmann and Reiske. It is true no book wearied her, but neither did any +interest her, and she could read her one book of Sermons as often as +scholars can go through Homer and Kant. Her secular or “profane” +authors were only two; in fact, one married pair of authors—the +immortal authoress of her own cookery receipts, and that, lady’s +husband—but the latter she never read. She paid his essays the tribute +of her profoundest admiration, but she never glanced into them. Three +sensible words with the bookbinder’s wife were of more value in her +eyes than all the bookbinder’s and bookmaker’s printed ones put +together. To a literary man who is making new arguments, and new ink, +all the year long, it is incomprehensible how those persons who have +neither a book, nor a pen, nor a drop of ink in the house (except the +pale rusty liquid borrowed from the village schoolmaster) can exist at +all. Firmian sometimes appointed himself a species of special +Professor-extraordinary, and mounted the professional chair with the +view of initiating Lenette into one or two of the elementary principles +of Astronomy; but either she had no pineal gland (that manor-house of +the soul and its ideas), or else the chambers of her brain were +saturated, satiated, and crammed to the roof with lace, bonnets, +shirts, and saucepans; at all events, it was beyond his power to get a +single star into her head bigger than a reel of cotton. With +Pneumatology (Psychology), again, his difficulty was exactly of the +<i>converse</i> sort. In this branch of science, where the calculus of the +infinitesimally small would have come to his aid with an equal amount +of serviceableness as that of the infinitely great in astronomy, +Lenette expanded and stretched out the dimensions of the angels, souls, +and so forth, passing the minutest and most ethereal of spiritual +beings through the stretching mill of her imagination, so that +angels—of whom the scholiasts would have invited whole companies to a +carpet-dance on the tip of a new needle (or have threaded them with it +by couples on one and the same point of space)—expanded on her hands +to such an extent that each angel would have filled a cradle by itself; +and as for the Devil, he swelled out upon her till he got to be pretty +much about the size of her husband. +</p> + +<p> +Further, Siebenkæs discovered an iron-mould stain, a pock-mark or wart, +on her heart; he could never warm her into a true lyric enthusiasm of +Love, in which she should forget heaven and earth, and all things. She +could count the strokes of the town clock amid his kisses; though some +affecting story or discourse of his might bring the big tears to her +eyes, she could still hear the soup-pot boiling over, and run away to +it, tears and all. She would join devoutly in the hymns which came +resounding from the other lodgers’ rooms of a Sunday, but in the middle +of a verse ask the prosaic question, “What shall I warm for supper?” +and he never could forget that, once, when she was listening, +apparently much interested and quite touched, to one of his +chamber-sermons on death and immortality, she looked at him, +thoughtfully it is true, but with a glance directed downward, and said, +“Don’t put on that left stocking to-morrow morning till I’ve darned it +for you.” +</p> + +<p> +The author of this tale declares that he has sometimes been driven +nearly out of his mind by feminine <i>entr’actes</i> of this sort, against +the occurrence of which there is no warranty for the man who soars up +into the æther in company with these beautiful birds of paradise, and +there hovers up and down with them, in the fond hope of hatching the +eggs of his phantasies upon their backs up among the clouds.<a name="div2Ref_52" href="#div2_52"><sup>[52]</sup></a> All in +an instant, down drops the winged mate, as if by magic, with a green +gleam, on to a clod of earth. I admit that this is but an excellence +the more; it makes them resemble the hens, whose eyes the Great +Optician of the Universe has made so perfect that they can see the most +distant sparrow-hawk in the sky as well as the nearest grain of malt on +the dunghill. It is to be hoped, indeed, that the author of this story, +should he ever chance to marry, may meet with a wife to whom he may be +able to give readings concerning the more essential principles and +dictata of psychology and astronomy without her bringing in the subject +of his stockings in the middle of his loftiest and fullest flights of +enthusiasm; but yet he will be well content should one possessed of +moderate excellencies fall to his lot—one who shall be capable of +accompanying him, side by side with him, in his flights, so far as they +may extend—whose eyes and heart may be wide enough to take in the +blooming earth and the shining heavens in great, grand masses at a +time, and not in mere infinitesimal particles; for whom this universe +shall be something higher than a nursery and a ball-room; and who, with +feelings delicate and tender, and a heart both pious and wide, should +be continually making her husband better and holier. The author’s +fondest wishes go not beyond this. +</p> + +<p> +Thus, then, while the flowers, if not the leaves, were falling fast +from Firmian’s love, Lenette’s was like a rose somewhat overblown, +whose beauty a touch will scatter to the earth. Her husband’s endless +arguments wearied her heart at length. Moreover, she was one of those +women whose loveliest blossoms remain sterile and dead, unless children +troop around to enjoy them, as the flowers of the vine do not produce +grapes unless frequented by bees. She belonged to this class of women +also in this respect, that she was born to be the spiral mainspring of +a housekeeping engine—the stage-manageress of a great household +theatre. Alas! the market-value of the shares, and the state of the +treasury of the said theatre are well-known to everybody—from Hamburg +to Ofen. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, our couple, like phœnixes and giants, were childless: the +two columns stood apart and unconnected, no fruit garlands twining +about them to bind them one to another. Firmian had, in imagination, +thoroughly rehearsed the character of <i>père de famille</i>, and dispatcher +of invitations to be godfather, but it never came to a performance. +</p> + +<p> +What was most of all effective in breaking him away from Lenette’s +heart, however, was his dissimilarity to Peltzstiefel. The Schulrath +had in him as much of the wearisome, the deliberately circumspect, the +grave and reserved, the stiff and starched, the pompous and inflated, +the heavy and the dull, as——these three lines have; but this +delighted the very soul of our born housekeeper. Siebenkæs, again, was +like a jerboa from morning till night. She often said to him, “I’m sure +people must think you’re not quite right in the head;” to which he +would answer, “And am I?” He concealed the beauty of his character +behind a comedy mask, and the trodden-down heels of the buskins he +always wore made his stature seem shorter than it really was. The brief +drama of his own life he turned into a mere burlesque and parodied +epic, and it was from higher motives than mere vain folly that he so +gave himself over to grotesque performances. In the first place he +delighted with a deep delight in the sense of freedom of soul, and +entire absence of all conventional trammels; secondly, he found +pleasure in the thought that he travestied—not imitated—the follies +of his fellow-men. In acting his part he had a double enjoyment—that +of comedian as well as that of the spectator. A person who puts humour +into action is a satirical <i>improvisatore</i>. Every male reader +understands this though no female reader does. I have often wished that +I could place in the hands of a woman, looking at the white sun-ray of +wisdom broken into a tinted spectrum by the prism of humour, some +powerful lens which should <i>burn</i> that spectrum back into its pristine +whiteness,—but it is not to be done. The fine, delicate, womanly sense +of the fit, the proper, the becoming, seems to be torn and scratched by +the touch of anything angular and unpolished; these souls, so firmly +welded on to the every-day, commonplace, conventional relations of +things, cannot understand souls which place themselves in antagonism to +these relations. And therefore it is that humorists are so rare in the +hereditary kingdoms of women, courts—and in their realm of shadows, +France. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette could not be otherwise than much, and continually, vexed and +annoyed with this whistling, singing, dancing husband of hers—a +man who didn’t behave to his very clients with anything like +proper professional gravity; who, sad to say—and people assured +her it was a fact—often walked in circles round the gallows on +the hill,—concerning whose sanity sensible people spoke very +doubtfully—as to whom she complained, that you would never think, +to see him, that he lived in a royal burgh, the capital of the +province—and who was respectful and reserved only before one person +in the world, namely, himself. Why, when maidservants, from the very +best houses in the place, came in—with linen to be made up, and so +on—didn’t they very often see him jump up and, without a “With your +leave,” or “By your leave,” to anybody, run to his old, battered, +rattling piano (it still had all its keys, and nearly as many strings), +and there he would stand with a wooden yard-measure in his mouth, up +which, as over a drawbridge, the notes climbed to him from the +soundboard, then through the portcullis of his teeth, finally arriving +at his soul by way of the Eustachian tube and the drum of the ear. He +held this stork’s-beak of a yard-measure between his teeth as described +in order to magnify the inaudible pianissimo of his piano into a +fortissimo at its upper end. However, humour looks paler when reflected +in narrative than in the vividness of reality. +</p> + +<p> +That portion of earth’s surface on which these two stood was riven into +two distinct islets by these continual tremblings of the soil, and +these islets kept drifting steadily further and further apart. And ere +long there came a serious shock of earthquake. +</p> + +<p> +For the Heimlicher came on the stage again, with his plea of demurrer +to Siebenkæs’s suit, in which all he demanded was justice and +equity—in other words, the money which was in question, unless Siebenkæs +could prove himself to be himself, that is to say, the ward, whose +patrimony the Heimlicher had hitherto kept in his paternal hands and purse. +This juridical Hell-river took Firmian’s breath away and struck ice-cold +to his heart, though he had jumped over the three previous petitions for +postponement as easily as the crowned lion over the three rivers in the +Gotha coat-of-arms. The wounds which we receive from Fate soon heal, +but those inflicted by the blunt and rusty torture-implement of an +unjust man suppurate and take long to close. This cut, made into nerves +already laid bare by so many a rude clutch and sharp tongue, caused our +dear friend some severe pain; yet he had seen that the cut was coming +long before it came, and had cried to his spirit, “Look out—mind your +head!” Alas! there is something <i>new</i> in <i>every</i> pain. He had even +taken legal steps in anticipation of it. A few weeks before he +had had evidence sent from Leipsic, where he had studied, to prove that +he had formerly been known by the name of Leibgeber, and was, +consequently, Blaise’s ward. A young notary there, of the name of +Giegold, an old college friend and literary brother in arms, had done +him the service of seeing all the people who had known of his +Leibgeberhood—particularly a rusty, musty old tutor, who had often +been present when the guardian’s register-ships came in—and a +postman, who had piloted them into port, and his landlord and other +well-informed persons, who all took the Jus credulitalis (or oath of +conviction), and whose evidence the young lawyer forwarded to Siebenkæs +(like a mountain full of precious ore); he had no great difficulty, to +speak of, in paying the postage of it, as he was king of the marksmen. +</p> + +<p> +With this stout club of evidence he resisted and withstood his guardian +and robber. +</p> + +<p> +When Blaise’s denial was lodged, the timid Lenette gave herself and the +suit up for lost; poverty, lean and bare, seemed in <i>her</i> eyes now to +enmesh them in a network of parasite ivy, and there was no other +prospect for them but to perish and fall to the ground. Her first +proceeding was to burst into loud abuse of Von Meyern; for as he had +himself told her that his father-in-law’s three applications for delay +had been the result of <i>his</i> intercession, which he had made for her +sake alone, she looked upon Blaise’s plea of demurrer as being the +first thorn-sucker sent forth by Rosa’s revengeful soul in return for +the imprisonment and the sacking he had undergone in Firmian’s house +(and half ascribed to her), and for what he had lost. +</p> + +<p> +Up to the day of the shooting-match he had supposed that the husband +was his enemy, but not the wife; then, however, his pleasant conceit +had been embittered and proved to be groundless. But the Venner not +being present to hear her reproaches, she was obliged to turn the full +stream of her anger on to her husband, to whom she attributed all the +blame, because of his having so wickedly and sinfully changed names +with Leibgeber. He who has married a wife will be prepared to relieve +me of the trouble of mentioning that it made not the slightest +difference what Siebenkæs said in reply or adduced concerning Blaise’s +wickedness (who, being the greatest Judas Iscariot and corn-Jew the +world contained, would have robbed him just the same if his name had +been Leibgeber still, and would have found out a thousand legal +byepaths by which to proceed to the plundering of his ward). It had no +effect. At last the following words were forced out of him: “You are +quite as unjust as I should be were I to attribute this document of +Blaise’s to your behaviour to the Venner.” Nothing irritates women so +much as derogatory comparisons; they apply them indiscriminately, +without distinction. Lenette’s ears lengthened to tongues, like those +of Rumour; her husband was immediately out-bawled and unlistened to. +</p> + +<p> +He was obliged to send privately to Peltzstiefel to ask where he had +been so long, and why he had utterly forgotten their house; Stiefel was +not even in his own house, however, but out walking, for it was a +beautiful day. +</p> + +<p> +“Lenette,” said Siebenkæs suddenly—he often preferred vaulting over a +marsh on the leaping-pole of an idea to wading painfully across it on +the long stilts of syllogism, and was anxious to banish from her memory +the innocent remark which he had let slip about Rosa, and which she had +so utterly misunderstood—“Lenette, I’ll tell you what we’ll do this +afternoon; we’ll take a strong cup of coffee, and go and take a walk +and enjoy ourselves: it is not a Sunday, but it <i>is</i> the day which all +the Catholics in the town keep holiday on as the feast of the +Annunciation, and the weather is really <i>too</i> magnificent. We’ll go and +sit in the big upstairs room at the Rifle Club-house, as it would be a +little too warm outside perhaps, and we can look down from the windows +and see all the heterodox people promenading in their best clothes—and +our Lutheran Stiefel among them, who knows?” +</p> + +<p> +Either I am more in error than I often am, or this was a most agreeable +surprise to Lenette. Coffee, in the morning the water-of-baptism +and altar-wine of the fair sex, is their love-philter and their +waters-of-strife in the afternoon (the <i>latter</i>, however, only as +regards the absent); but what a wondrous mill-stream for the setting in +motion of the machinery of the ideas must an afternoon cup of coffee on +a common working-day be for a woman such as Lenette, who rarely had any +on other than Sunday afternoons; for before the days of the blockade of +the continent it cost too much money. +</p> + +<p> +A woman who is really very much delighted needs but a very short time +to put on her black silk bonnet and take her big church-fan, and +(contrary to all her ordinary manners and customs) be <i>quite</i> ready and +dressed for a walk to the Rifle Club-house, even going the length of +making the coffee during the process of dressing, so as to be able to +take it, and the milk, with her in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +Our couple set forth at two o’clock in the happiest possible frame of +mind, carrying with them warm in their pockets what was to be warmed up +later on in the afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +Even at two o’clock, early as it was, the western and southern hills +lay all beflooded with the warm evening glow with which the low +December sun was bathing them, while great glaciers of cloud, ranged +about the sky, cast their cheerful lights over the landscape. All about +this world there beamed a beautiful brightness, which cheered and +lighted up many a dark and narrow life. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs pointed out the eagle’s perch to Lenette while they were +still at some distance from it—the alpenstock or boat-pole which had +so recently helped him out of his most imminent difficulties. When they +reached the Clubhouse he took her and showed her the shooter’s-stand +where he had shot himself with his rifle up to the dignity of bird +emperor, and out of the Frankfort-Jew’s-quarter of duns, liberating at +his coronation at least <i>one</i> debtor, namely, himself. They had room +and to spare to “spread themselves out” (so to speak) upstairs in the +members’ hall—he at a writing-table by the right-hand window, and she +with her work at another on the left. +</p> + +<p> +How the coffee gave warmth to this December festival may be imagined, +but not described. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette put on one stocking of her husband’s after another—put them on +her left arm, that is, while her right wielded the darning-needle; and +as she sat, with a stocking generally quite open at the bottom, she +was, as regarded one of her arms at all events, like a lady with the +long, fashionable Danish mittens, with holes for the fingers. However, +she did not raise these arm-stockings of hers high enough to be seen by +the people walking in the upper walks, but kept nodding down her “your +very humble and obedient servant” from the open window to numbers of +the most genteel she-heretics as they passed, wearing her own works of +art upon their heads, in honour of the Annunciation-feast; and more +than one sent an obliging salute up to her roof-thatcher. +</p> + +<p> +The strictest religious and political parity being established by law +in Kuhschnappel, it was natural that Protestants of position should +also go a-walking on this Catholic holiday. However, the advocate was +perhaps enjoying himself quite as much as his wife; he went on writing +his ‘Devil’s Papers,’ and at the same time feasting his gaze upon the +high places, the <i>sommités</i> of the landscape, if not of Kuhschnappel +society. +</p> + +<p> +When he first entered the room he had a most agreeable reception from a +child’s trumpet, left there by accident; the paint was not quite all +licked away from it, and it was the smell of this paint, more even than +the squeak of the trumpet, which pleased him so very much, by recalling +the vague delights of Christmases of the past: so that pleasure was +heaped upon pleasure. He could rise from his satires and point out to +Lenette the great rooks’ nests in the leafless trees, and the bare +tables and benches in the arbours, and the invisible guests who had +occupied seats of the blessed there on summer evenings, and still +remembered the time, looking forward to a repetition of it; and he +could draw her attention to the fields, where, late as it was in the +year, volunteer gardeneresses were gathering salad for him, namely, +corn salad or rampion, which he might have some of for supper if he had +a mind. +</p> + +<p> +And now he sat at his window, with his eyes fixed upon the hills, all +flushed with the evening red, the sun growing larger as it sunk towards +them. Beyond these hills lay the lands where wandered his Leibgeber, +sporting away his life. +</p> + +<p> +“How delightful it is, wife,” he said, “that what parts me from +Leibgeber is not a mere wide level plain, with nothing but a hillock or +two cropping up here and there on it, but a grand, lofty wall of +mountains, behind which he stands as if behind the grating of a +monastery.” This sounded to her almost as if her husband was glad that +this barrier stood between them; she herself had but little liking for +Leibgeber, and considered him to be a sort of coin-clipper to her +husband, who cut all his angles sharper than they were by nature; +however, in dubious cases like this, she was always glad to ask no +questions. What he <i>had</i> meant was exactly the reverse of what she +supposed; he had meant that it is good, if parted from those we love, +that it should be by holy hills, because they are, as it were, lofty +garden-walls, behind which we picture the flowery thickets of our +Edens; whereas, on the other verge of the broadest barnfloor of a level +plain we only picture to ourselves a repetition of it sloping the other +way. And this applies to nations as well as to individuals. The +Luneburg moors or the Marklands of Prussia will not draw even an +Italian’s longing gaze towards Italy; but when a Markman in Italy sees +the Apennines, his heart yearns to his German loved ones behind them. +</p> + +<p> +As Firmian looked upon that sunny mountain-barrier between two severed +spirits, there was that in his eyes which much resembled tears; but he +only turned his chair a little away, that Lenette might ask no +questions; he was well aware of his old ingrained habit of getting +angry when anybody asked what brought tears to his eyes, and he strove +with it. Was he not, in fact, tenderness personified to-day, only +acting his comedy in the palest middle-tints before his wife, because +he was delighting in the fresh-growth of this enjoyment of hers, of +which he was himself the origin. It is true she did not discover the +existence of this, his feeling of delicate consideration for her; but +just as he was quite content when no one but himself (least of all, +<i>she</i>) perceived that he was poking fun at her (in the most delicate +manner), so was he content that she should be in utter ignorance that +he was causing her a little happiness. +</p> + +<p> +At last they left the spacious room, the sun now robing them in +purple hues; and as they went he drew Lenette’s attention to the +liquid, golden splendour shining upon the roofs of the greenhouses, +and he hung himself on to the sun—at that moment cut in two by the +mountain-range—that he might sink, with it, to his far-away friend. +Ah! how strong is love in distance—be it distance of space, or of +time, of the future or the past—ay, or that greater distance +still—beyond this world! And so the evening might very well have ended +in an altogether delightful manner, had not something intervened. +</p> + +<p> +For some particularly ingenious evil spirit or other had taken the +Heimlicher von Blaise, and so set him down, promenading in the open +air, that the advocate must needs come within shooting range and +hailing distance of him just on a feast of the Annunciation for <i>good</i> +folks only. When the guardian went through the proper forms of +salutation—accompanying them with a smile such as, fortunately, can +never be seen on a child’s face—Siebenkæs returned his salutes +politely, although with a mere clutching and jerking at his hat—which +he didn’t take off. Lenette tried to make amends for this, by doubling +the profundity of her own bow and curtsey; but as soon as practicable +she administered to her husband a garden lecture, or, rather, a garden +<i>paling</i> lecture, on his always, as if on purpose, irritating his +guardian whenever he had an opportunity. “Indeed, love,” he said, “I +couldn’t help it. I really meant nothing of the kind to-day, of all +days in the year.” +</p> + +<p> +The truth of the matter, indeed, is, that Siebenkæs had sometime before +complained to his wife that his hat, which was of softish felt, was +getting a good deal spoiled by having to be so often taken off to +people in the streets, and that he could think of nothing better than +to protect it with a coat of mail in the shape of a stiff cover of +green oilskin, so that when packed up in this pudding roll he might go +on daily employing it in those offices of out-door politeness which men +owe one to another, without ever having to take hold of the hat +<i>itself</i> at all. Well, the first walk he took after assuming this +double hat, or hat’s hat, was to a grocer’s, where he disembowelled the +inner one from its envelope and swopped it away for six pounds of +coffee, which warmed the four chambers of his brain better than the +hare-skin had ever done; he then went tranquilly home, with only the +coadjutor hat on his head, undetected, and thenceforward bore the empty +case through the streets with a secret joy that, in a sense, he now +really took off his <i>hat</i> to nobody—with other entertaining fancies +bearing on the subject of his sugar-loaf. +</p> + +<p> +Of course, when he forgot—and on that day in particular, it was +perhaps excusable that he did so—to support his hat-case with the +necessary framework of artificial rafters, it was really almost an +impossibility to take this mere shell of a hat <i>right</i> OFF for purposes +of salutation. The most he could do was just to <i>touch</i> it courteously, +like an officer returning a salute; and thus, against his will, play +the part of a rude and ill-bred individual. +</p> + +<p> +And it so happened that just on this very day get it off he could not. +</p> + +<p> +It was so ordained, however, that matters should not even rest <i>here</i> +(as regarded our couple’s promenade), but one of the above-mentioned +ingenious evil spirits changed the scene of the drama with such +nimbleness, that we have a fresh combination before our eyes before we +know where we are. Just in front of our wedded pair, a master tailor of +the Catholic confession was taking his walk, most sprucely attired in +honour of the Feast of the Annunciation, like all the rest of his +<i>pro</i>- and CON-fession. As ill luck would have it, this tailor, being +in a narrow walk, had (whether for fear of mud, or in the delight of +his soul over his holiday) so elevated his coat-tails that the +vertebral extremity, the <i>os coccygis</i>, or (shall we call it) insertion +of the spinal cord, of his waistcoat, was clearly exhibited; in other +words, the <i>background</i> of his waistcoat, which, as we know, is +generally executed in colours more subdued than those used for the +brighter and more prominent foreground on the chest of the wearer. “Hy! +Mr.!” cried Lenette; “what are you doing with a lot of my chintz on the +back of you?” +</p> + +<p> +The truth was that this tailor had put aside and taken possession of so +much of a nice green Augspurg chintz (sent to him by Lenette, on her +becoming a queen, to make her a new body) as he considered proper and +Christianly honest, calculating on the principle of “no charge for wine +samples,” and this trifle of a sample had just barely sufficed to form +a sober background to his pea-green waistcoat; and he had contented +himself with so dim a reverse side for this waistcoat in the confident +expectation that it would never be seen. However, as the tailor went on +with his walk (after Lenette had shouted her query at him), as utterly +unmoved as if it had nothing on earth to do with <i>him</i>, the little +spark of her anger became a blazing flame, and, regardless of all her +husband’s winks and whispers, she cried aloud, “Why, it’s my very own +chintz, that I got all the way from Augspurg; do you hear, Mr. Mowser, +you’ve stolen my chintz, you blackguard, you!” Then, and not till then, +the guilty chintz-robber turned round with much <i>sangfroid</i>, and said, +“<i>Prove</i> that, if you please! But, mind, <i>I’ll </i><span class="sc2">CHINTZ YOU</span>, if there +be +such a thing as law in all Kuhschnappel.” +</p> + +<p> +At this she burst into a conflagration. Her husband’s prayers and +entreaties were but as wind to her. “Ey! you riff-raff,” she snapped +out. “But I’ll have what’s my own—you villain!” she cried. The only +reply the tailor vouchsafed to this attack was this—he simply lifted +his coat-tails with both hands high above the endorsed waistcoat, and, +bending a little forward, said, “There!” after which he strode slowly +on, keeping at the same focal distance from her, so as to bask in her +warmth as long as possible. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs was the most to be pitied on this rich feast day, when, in +spite of all his juristic and theological exorcisms, he could not cast +out this devil of discord—when by good luck his guardian angel +suddenly emerged from a side path, Peltzstiefel to wit, taking his +walk. Gone, so far as Lenette was concerned, were the tailor, the +quarter-ell of chintz, the apple of discord, and the devil thereof; the +blue of her eyes and the blush on her cheek fronted Stiefel as bright +and as fresh as the blue of the evening sky and the blush on its sunset +clouds. Ten ells of chintz and half that number of tailors with +waistcoat-backs of it into the bargain, were to her, at that moment, +feathers light as air, not worth a word or a farthing; so that +Siebenkæs saw on the instant that Stiefel’s coming was as that of a +regular Mount of Olives all full of mere olive-branches of peace; +although for discord devils hailing from another quarter there might +without difficulty be pressed from the olives on said mountain an oil +which could not be poured on any fire of matrimonial difference which +<i>Stiefel’s</i> would be the bucket to put out. If Lenette was a tender, +delicate, white butterfly, silently hovering and fluttering about +Peltzstiefel’s flowery path, <i>out of doors</i>—when she got him into her +house she was an absolute Greek Psyche; and, in spite of all my +partiality for her, I am bound, under pain of having all the rest +discredited, to insert in this protocol a clear statement (much as I +regret to do so) to the effect that on this particular evening she gave +one the idea of being nothing but some clear-winged translucent soul +free from all trammels of body—which, at some former time, while as +yet in the body, had stood in some love-relationship to the Schulrath, +but now hovered about him with upraised pinions, and fanned him with +fluttering downy plumes, and which at length weary of hovering, and +pleased to rest once more on the loved perch of a body, settled upon +Lenette’s, there being no other feminine one at hand, and there folded +its wings to rest. Such seemed Lenette. But why was she thus to-day? +Stiefel’s ignorance and delight at it were great; Firmian’s very small. +Before I explain it, I will say, “I pity thee, poor husband, and thee, +too, poor wife. For why must the smooth flow of the stream of your life +(and of our own) be always broken by sorrows or by sins, and why cannot +it fall into its grave in the <i>Black</i> Sea, without having to pass over +thirteen cataracts, like the river Dnieper?” However, the reason why +Lenette on this day in particular exhibited all her heart toward +Stiefel, almost bared of the cloister grating of the breast, was that +she was, just on this day, so keenly suffering under her misery—her +poverty. Stiefel was full of genuine, solid treasures; Firmian’s were +all lacquered. I know that her Siebenkæs, whom before marriage she had +loved with the calm and cool regard of a wife, would have found that +she would have come to love him after marriage with the warm affection +of a <i>fiancée</i>, if he had only been able to give her the bare +necessaries of life. There are hundreds of girls who bring themselves +to believe that they love the man to whom they are engaged, whereas it +is not till after marriage that the play becomes a reality—and that +for good reasons, both metallic and physiological. In a well-filled +room and kitchen, filled with a comfortable income, and twelve +household labours of Hercules, Lenette would have been quite true to +the advocate, though an entire philosophical society of Stiefels had +sat down all round her, and would have said and thought, every hour of +the day, “No more, thank you—I am helped;” but as things were, in a +house and kitchen so empty as hers, the chambers of a woman’s heart +grow full; in one word, no good comes of it. For a woman’s soul is by +nature a beautiful <i>fresco</i> painted on rooms, table-leaves, dresses, +silver salvers, and household plenishing in general. A woman has a +large stock of virtue, but few virtues; she needs a confined sphere and +social forms, and without these flower-sticks the pure white flowers +trail in the dust of the border. A man may be a citizen of the world, +and if he has nothing else to put his arms round he can press the +entire earthly ball to his bosom, although he can’t put his arms round +much more of it than will make him a grave. But a citizen<i>ess</i> of the +world is a giantess, and goes through the world with nothing but +spectators, and is nothing but a character on the stage. +</p> + +<p> +I ought to have described the whole of this evening much more +circumstantially than I have done, for it was upon this evening that +the wheels of the <i>vis-à-vis</i> phæton of wedded life began to smoke, as +a consequence of the friction they had recently been subjected to, and +threatened to break out into a blaze of the fire of jealousy. Jealousy +is like Maria Theresa’s small-pox, which allowed that princess to pass +with impunity through thirty hospitals, full of small-pox patients, but +attacked her beneath the Crowns of Hungary and Germany. Siebenkæs had +had on that of Kuhschnappel (the Bird-one) for a week or two now. +</p> + +<p> +After this evening Stiefel, who took an increasing delight in sitting +basking in the rays of the still rising Sun of Lenette, came oftener +and oftener, and considered himself the peace-maker, not the +peace-breaker. +</p> + +<p> +It is now my duty to paint with the utmost minutiæ of detail the last +and most important day of this year, the 31st of December, with its +background and foreground all complete, and with all accessories. +</p> + +<p> +Before the 31st of December arrived, of course Christmas came, a time +which had to be gilt, and which turned Siebenkæs’s silver age (after +the Royal shot) into a brazen and a wooden age. The money went. But, +worse than that, poor Firmian had fretted, and laughed, himself into an +illness. A man who has all his life, upon the upper wings of Fantasy +and the lower wings of good spirits, skimmed lightly away over the tops +of all the spread-net snares and the open pitfalls of life, does, if +once he chances to get impaled upon the hard spines of the full-blown +thistles (above the purple blossoms and the honey-vessels of which he +used to hover) beat in a terrible way about him, hungry, bleeding, +epileptically—a glad, happy man finds in the first sunstroke of +trouble well-nigh his death-blow. To the polypus of anxiety daily +growing in Siebenkæs’s heart add the effects of the work and excitement +of authorship. He was very anxious to get done with his ‘Selections +from the Devil’s Papers’ at the earliest moment possible, so as to live +on the price of them and carry on the law-suit besides. So that he sat +through entire nights almost (and chairs as well). And in this way he +wrote himself into an affection of the chest, such as the present +author brought upon himself, and that, as far as he could make out, +simply by excess of bountiful generosity towards the world of letters. +He was attacked, just as I was, by a sudden pausing of the breath and +of the action of the heart, succeeded by a blank disappearance of the +spirit of life, and then by a throbbing rush of blood up to the brain; +and this came on most frequently while he was sitting at his literary +spinning-wheel and spool.<a name="div2Ref_53" href="#div2_53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +However, not a soul offers either of us one single farthing, by way of +indemnification, on account of it. It would appear to be ordained that +authors are not to go down to posterity in the body, but only in the +form of portraits or plaster-casts; as delicate trout are boiled before +being sent away as presents, people don’t put in the laurel-sprig +(which is stuck into our mouths as lemons are into the wild boar’s) +until we have been killed and dished. It would be a gratification to my +colleagues and to me if a reader whose heart we have moved (as well as +its auricles) were only to say as much as, “This <i>sweet</i> emotion of +<i>my</i> heart was not produced without a hypochondriac palpitation of +theirs.” We brighten and illuminate many a head which never dreams of +thinking. “Yes, I have to thank <i>them</i> for this, it is true, but what +is their reward? Why, pains in their <i>own</i> heads—kephalalgia and +neuralgia in various forms!” Ay, he ought to interrupt me in the middle +of a satire like this, and cry, “Great as is the pain which his satires +cause <i>me</i>, they cause <i>him</i> far more; luckily, <i>my</i> pain is only +mental!” Health of body only runs parallel with health of mind; it +turns aside and departs from erudition, from over-much imagination, and +from great profundity. All these as little indicate health of mind as +corpulence, a runner’s feet, a wrestler’s arms, indicate health of +body. I have often wished that all souls were bottled into their bodies +as the Pyrmont water is put into its flasks. The best strength of it is +allowed to escape first, because, otherwise, it would break the bottle; +but it would seem that it is only in the case of colleges of cardinals +(if we are to credit Gorani), cathedral chapters, &c., that this +precaution is adopted, and that <i>their</i> extraordinary power of ability, +which would other wise have burst their bodies up, is, as a preliminary +measure, let off a good deal before they are put into bodies and sent +upon earth; so that the bottles last quite well for seventy or eighty +years. +</p> + +<p> +With a sick mind, then, and a sick heart, without money, Siebenkæs +begun the last day of the year. The day itself had put on its most +beautiful summer-dress—one of Berlin blue; it was as cerulean as +Krishna, or the new sect of Grahamites, or the Jews in Persia. It had +had a fire lighted in the balloon-stove of the sun, and the snow, +delicately candied upon the earth, melted into wintergreen, like the +sugar on some cunningly-devised supper-dish, as soon as the hills were +brought within reach of its warmth. The year seemed to be saying +good-bye to Time as if with a cheerful warmth, attended with joyful +tears. Firmian longed to run and sun himself upon the moist, green +sward; but he had Professor Lang, of Baireuth, to review first. +</p> + +<p> +He wrote reviews as many people offer up prayers—only in time of need. +It was like the water-carrying of the Athenian, done that he might +afterwards devote himself to the studies of his choice without dying of +hunger. But when he was reviewing, he drew his satiric sting into its +sheath, constructing his criticisms of material drawn only from his +store of wax and his honey-bag. “Little authors,” he said, “are always +better than their works, and great ones are worse than theirs. Why +should I pardon moral failings—e.g. self-conceit—in the genius, and +not in the dunce? Least of all should it be forgiven the genius. +Unmerited poverty and ugliness do not deserve to be ridiculed; but they +as little deserve it when they <i>are merited</i>—though I am aware Cicero +is against me here—for a moral fault (and consequently its punishment) +can, of a certainty, not be made greater by a chance physical +consequence, which sometimes follows upon it, and sometimes does not. +Can it? Does an extravagant person who chances to come to poverty +deserve a severer punishment than one who does not? If anything, rather +the reverse.” If we apply this to bad authors, from whose own eyes +their lack of merit is hidden by an impenetrable veil of self-conceit, +and at whose unoffending heart the critic discharges the fury which is +aroused in him by their (offending) heads, we may, indeed, direct our +bitterest irony against <i>the race</i>, but the <i>individual</i> will be best +instructed by means of gentleness. I think it would be the gold-test, +the trial-by-crucible, of a morally great and altogether perfect +scholar to give him a bad, but celebrated book to review. +</p> + +<p> +For my own part, I will allow myself to be reviewed by Dr. Merkel +throughout eternity if I digress again in this chapter. Firmian +worked in some haste at his notice of Lang’s essay, entitled +“Præmissa Historiæ Superintendentium Generalium Bairuthi non +Specialium—Continuatione XX.” It was quite essential that he should +get hold of a dollar or two that day, and he also longed to go and take +a walk, the weather was so motherly, so <i>hatching</i>. The new year fell +on the Saturday, and as early as the Thursday (the day before the one +we are writing of) Lenette had begun the holding of preliminary feasts +of purification (she now washed daily more and more <i>in advance</i> of +actual necessities); but to-day she was keeping a regular feast of +in-gathering among the furniture, &c. The room was being put through a +course of derivative treatment for the clearing away of all impurities. +With her eye on her <i>index expurgandorum</i>, she thrust everything that +had wooden legs into the water, and followed it herself with balls of +soap; in short, she paddled and bubbled, in the Levitical purification +of the room, in her warm, native element, for once in her life to her +heart’s full content. As for Siebenkæs, he sat bolt-upright in +purgatorial fire, already beginning to emit a smell of burning. +</p> + +<p> +For, as it happened, he was rather madder than usual that day, to begin +with. Firstly, because he had made up his mind that he would pawn the +striped calico-gown in the afternoon, though whole nunneries were to +shriek their loudest at it, and because he foresaw that he would have +to grow exceedingly warm in consequence. And this resolve of resolves +he had taken on this particular day, because (and this is at the same +time the second reason why he was madder than usual)—because he was +sorry that their good days were all gone again, and that their music of +the spheres had all been marred by Lenette’s funereal Misereres. +</p> + +<p> +“Wife!” he said, “I’m reviewing for money now, recollect.” She went on +with her scraping. “I have got Professor Lang before me here—the +seventh chapter of him, in which he treats of the sixth of the +Superintendents-General of Bayreuth, Herr Stockfleth.” She was going to +stop in a minute or two, but just then, you know, she really <i>could</i> +NOT. Women are fond of doing everything “by and bye”—they like putting +a thing off just for a minute or two, which is the reason why they put +off even their arrival in this world a few minutes longer than boys +do.<a name="div2Ref_54" href="#div2_54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> “This essay,” he continued, with forced calmness, “ought to +have been reviewed in the ‘Messenger’ six months ago, and it’ll never +do for the ‘Messenger’ to be like the ‘Universal German Library’ and +the Pope, and canonise people a century or so after date.” +</p> + +<p> +If he had only been able to maintain his forced calmness for one minute +longer, he would have got to the end of Lenette’s buzzing din; however, +he couldn’t. “Oh! the devil take me, and you, too, and the ‘Messenger +of the Gods’ into the bargain,” he burst out, starting up and dashing +his pen on the floor. “I don’t know,” he went on, suddenly resuming his +self-control, speaking in a faint, piteous tone, and sitting down, +quite unnerved, feeling something like a man with cupping-glasses on +all over him—“I don’t know a bit what I’m translating, or whether I’m +writing Stockfleth or Lang. What a stupid arrangement it is that an +advocate mayn’t be as deaf as a judge. If I were deaf, I should be +exempt from torture then. Do you know how many people it takes to +constitute a tumult by law? Either ten, or you by yourself in that +washing academy of music of yours.” He was not so much inclined to be +reasonable as to do as the Spanish innkeeper did, who charged the noise +made by his guests in the bill. But now, having had her way, and gained +her point, she was noiseless in word and deed. +</p> + +<p> +He finished his critique in the forenoon, and sent it to Stiefel, his +chief, who wrote back that he would bring the money for it himself in +the evening, for he now seized upon every possible opportunity of +paying a visit. At dinner Firmian (in whose head the sultry, fœtid +vapour of ill-temper would not dissolve and fall), said, “I can’t +understand how you come to care so very little about cleanliness and +order. It would be better even if you rather <i>overdid</i> your cleanliness +than otherwise. People say, what a pity it is such an orderly man as +Siebenkæs should have such a slovenly kind of wife!” To irony of this +sort, though she knew quite well it <i>was</i> irony, she always opposed +regular formal arguments. He could never get her to enjoy these little +jests instead of arguing about them, or join him in laughing at the +masculine view of the question. The fact is, a woman abandons her +opinion as soon as her husband adopts it. Even in church, the women +sing the tunes an octave higher than the men that they may differ from +them in all things. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon the great, the momentous, hour approached in which the +ostracism, the banishment from house and home, of the checked calico +gown was at last to be carried out—the last and greatest deed of the +year 1785. Of this signal for fight, this Timour’s and Muhammed’s red +battle-flag, this Ziska’s hide, which always set them by the ears, his +very soul was sick: he would have been delighted if somebody would have +stolen it, simply to be quit of the wearisome, threadbare idea of the +wretched rag for good and all. He did not hurry himself, but introduced +his petition with all the wordy prolixity of an M.P. addressing the +house (at home). He asked her to guess what might be the greatest +kindness, the most signal favour which she could do him on this last +day of the old year. He said he had an hereditary enemy, an +Anti-Christ, a dragon, living under his roof; tares sown among his +wheat by an enemy, which she could pull up if she chose; and, at last, +he brought the checked calico gown out of the drawer, with a kind of +twilight sorrow: “<i>This</i>,” he said, “is the bird of prey which +pursues me; the net which Satan sets to catch me; his sheep-skin +my martyr-robe, my Cassim’s slipper. Dearest, do me but this one +favour—send it to the pawn-shop!” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t answer just yet,” he said, gently laying his hand on her lips; +“let me just remind you what a stupid parish did when the only +blacksmith there was in it was going to be hanged in the village. This +parish thought it preferable to condemn an innocent master-tailor or +two to the gallows, because they could be better spared. Now, a woman +of your good sense must surely see how much easier and better it would +be to let me take away this mere piece of tailor’s stitch-work, than +metal things which we eat out of every day; the mourning calico won’t +be wanted, you know, as long as I’m alive.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve seen quite clearly for a long while past,” she said, “that you’ve +made up your mind to carry off my mourning dress from me, by hook or by +crook, whether I will or no. But I’m not going to let you have it. +Suppose I were to say to you, pawn your watch, how would you like +that?” Perhaps the reason why husbands get into the way of issuing +their orders in a needlessly dictatorial manner is, that they generally +have little effect, but rather confirm opposition than overcome it. +</p> + +<p> +“Damnation!” he cried; “that’ll do, that’s quite enough! I’m not a +turkey-cock, nor a bonassus neither, to be continually driven into a +frenzy by a piece of coloured rag. It goes to the pawn-shop to-day, as +sure as my name’s Siebenkæs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your name is Leibgeber as well,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“Devil fly away with me, if that calico remains in this house!” said +he. On which she began to cry, and lament the bitter fortune which left +her nothing now, not even the very clothes for her back. When +thoughtless tears fall into a seething masculine heart, they often have +the effect which drops of water have when they fall upon bubbling +molten copper; the fluid mass bursts asunder with a great explosion. +</p> + +<p> +“Heavenly, kind, gentle Devil,” said he, “do please come and break my +neck for me. May God have pity on a woman like this! Very well, then, +keep your calico; keep this Lenten altar-cloth of yours to yourself. +But may the Devil fly away with me if I don’t cock the old deer’s horns +that belonged to my father on to my head this very day, like a poacher +on the pillory, and hawk them about the streets for sale in broad +daylight. Ay. <i>I give you my word of honour</i> it shall be done, for all +the fun it may afford every soul in the place. And I shall simply say +that it is your doing; I’ll do it, as sure as there’s a devil in hell.” +</p> + +<p> +He went, gnashing his teeth, to the window, and looked into the street, +seeing vacancy. A rustic funeral was passing slowly by; the bier was a +man’s shoulder, and on it tottered a child’s rude coffin. +</p> + +<p> +Such a sight is a touching one, when one thinks of the little, obscure, +human creature, passing over from the fœtal slumber to the slumber +of death, from the amnion-membrane in this life to the shroud, that +amnion-membrane of the next; whose eyes have closed at their first +glimpse of this bright earth, without looking on the parents who now +gaze after it with theirs so wet with tears; which has been loved +without loving in return; whose little tongue moulders to dust before +it has ever spoken; as does its face ere it has smiled upon this odd, +contradictory, inconsistent orb of ours. These cut buds of this mould +will find a stem on which great destiny will graft them, these flowers +which, like some besides, close in sleep while it is still early +morning, will yet feel the rays of a morning sun which will open them +once more. As Firmian looked at the cold, shrouded child passing by, in +this hour, when he was ignobly quarrelling about the mourning dress +(which should mourn for <i>him</i>)—now, when the very last drops of the +old year were flowing so fast away, and his heart, now becoming so +terribly accustomed to these passing fainting fits, forbade him to hope +that he could ever complete the new one—now, amid all these pains and +sorrows, he seemed to hear the unseen river of Death murmuring under +his feet (as the Chinese lead rushing brooks under the soil of their +gardens), and the thin, brittle crust of ice on which he was standing +seemed as if it would soon crack and sink with him into the watery +depths. Unspeakably touched, he said to Lenette, “Perhaps you may be +quite right, dear, after all, to keep your mourning dress; you may have +some presentiment that I am not going to live. Do as you think best, +then, dear; I would fain not embitter this last of December any more; I +don’t know that it may not be <i>my</i> last in another sense, and that in +another year I may not be nearer to that poor baby than you. I am going +for a walk now.” +</p> + +<p> +She said nothing; all this startled and surprised her. He hurried away, +to escape the answer which was sure to come eventually; his absence +would, in the circumstances, be the most eloquent kind of oratory. All +persons are better than their outbreaks (or ebullitions)—that is, than +their <i>bad</i> ones; for all are worse than their <i>noble</i> ones, also—and +when we allow the former an hour or so to dissipate and disperse, we +gain something better than our point—we gain our opponent. He left +Lenette a very grave subject for cogitation, however,—the stag’s horns +and his word of honour. +</p> + +<p> +I have already once written it. The winter was lying on the ground all +bare and naked, not even the bed-sheet and chrisom-cloth of snow thrown +over it; there it lay beside the dry, withered mummy of the by-gone +summer. Firmian looked with an unsatisfied gaze athwart unclothed +fields (over which the cradle-quilt of the snow, and the white crape of +the frost, had not yet been laid), and down at the streams, not yet +struck palsied and speechless. Bright, warm days at the end of December +soften us with a sadness in which there are four or five bitter drops +more than in that belonging to the after-summer. Up to twelve o’clock +at night, and until the thirty-first day of the twelfth month, the +wintry, nocturnal, idea of dissolution and decay oppresses us; but as +soon as it is one in the morning, and the first of January, a morning +breeze, speaking of new life, moves away the clouds which were lying +over our souls, and we begin to look for the dark, pure, morning blue, +the rising of the star of morning and of spring. On a December day like +this the pale, dim, stagnant world of stiffened, sapless, plants about +us oppresses and hems us round; and the insect-collections lying +beneath the vegetation, covered with earth; and the rafter-work of +bare, dry, wrinkly trees; the December sun hanging in the sky at noon +no higher than the June sun does at evening; all these combined shed a +yellow lustre as of death (like that of burning alcohol) over the pale, +faded meadows; and long giant shadows lie extended, motionless, +everywhere—<i>evening</i> shadows of this evening of nature and of the +year—like the ruined remains, the burnt-out ash-heaps of nights as +long as themselves. But the glistening snow, on the other hand, spread +over the blooming earth under us, is like the blue foreground of +spring, or a white fog a foot or two in depth. The quiet dark sky lies +above, and the white earth is like some white moon, whose sparkling +ice-fields melt, as we draw nearer, into dark waving meadows of +flowers. +</p> + +<p> +The heart of our sorrowful Firmian grew sadder yet as he stood upon +this cold, burnt-out hearth-place of nature. The daily-recurring +pausings of his heart and pulse were (he thought) the sudden silences +of the storm-bell in his breast, presaging a speedy end of the thunder, +and dissolution of the storm-cloud, of life. He thought the faltering +of his mechanism was caused by some loose pin having fallen in among +the wheels somewhere; he ascribed it to polypus of the heart, and his +giddiness he felt sure gave warning of an attack of apoplexy. To-day +was the three hundred and sixty-fifth Act of the year, and the curtain +was slowly dropping upon it already: what could this suggest to him +save gloomy similes of his own epilogue—of the winter solstice of his +shortened, over-shadowed life? The weeping image of his Lenette came +now before his forgiving, departing soul, and he thought, “She is +really not in the right; but I will yield to her, as we have not very +long to be together now. I am glad for her sake, poor soul, that <i>my</i> +arms are mouldering away from about her, and that her friend is taking +her to his.” +</p> + +<p> +He went up on to the scaffold of blood and sorrow where <i>his</i> friend, +Heinrich, had taken his farewell. From that eminence, as often as his +heart was heavy, his glance would follow Leibgeber’s path as far as the +hills; but to-day his eyes were moister than before, for he had no hope +that he would see the spring again. This spot was to him the hill which +the Emperor Adrian permitted the Jews to go up twice in the year, that +they might look towards the ruins of the holy city and weep for the +place wherein their steps might tread no more. The sun was now +assembling the shadows which were to close in upon the old year, and as +the stars appeared—the stars which rose at evening now being those +which in spring adorn the morning—fate snapped away the loveliest and +richest in flowers of the liana-branches from his soul, and from the +wound flowed clear water. “I shall see nothing of the coming spring,” +he thought, “except her blue, which, as in enamel-painting, is the +first laid on of all her colours.” His heart—one educated to be +loving—could always fly for rest from his satires and from dry details +of business-duty, sometimes, too, from Lenette’s indifference and lack +of sympathy, to the warm breast of the eternal goddess Nature, ever +ready to take us to her heart. Into the free, unveiled, and blooming +out-door world, beneath the grand wide sky, he loved to repair with all +his sighs and sorrows, and in this great garden he made all his graves +(as the Jews made them in smaller ones). And when our fellows forsake +and wound us, the sky and the earth, and the little blooming tree, open +their arms and take us into them; the flowers press themselves to our +wounded hearts, the streams mingle in our tears, and the breezes +breathe coolness into our sighs. A mighty angel troubles and inspires +the great ocean-pool of Bethesda; into its warm waves we plunge, with +all our thousand aches and pains, and ascend from the water of life +with our spasms all relaxed and our health and vigour renewed once +more. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian walked slowly home with a heart all conciliation, and eyes +which, now that it was dark, he did not take the pains to dry. He went +over in his mind everything which could possibly be adduced in his +Lenette’s excuse. He strove to win himself over to her side of the +question by reflecting that she could not (like him) arm herself +against the shocks, the stumbling-stones, of life by putting on the +Minerva’s helm, the armour of meditation, philosophy, authorship. He +thoroughly determined (he had determined the same thing thirty times +before) to be as scrupulously careful to observe in all things the +outside <i>politesses</i> of life with <i>her</i> as with the most absolute +stranger;<a name="div2Ref_55" href="#div2_55"><sup>[55]</sup></a> nay, he already enveloped himself in the fly-net or +mail-shirt of patience, in case he should really find the checked +calico untranslated at home. This is how we men continually +behave—stopping our ears tight with both hands, trying our hardest to +fall into the siesta, the mid-day sleep, of a little peace of mind (if +we can only anyhow manage it); thus do our souls, swayed by our +passions, reflect the sunlight of truth as one dazzling spot (like +mirrors or calm water), while all the surrounding surface lies but in +deeper shade. +</p> + +<p> +How differently all fell out! He was received by Peltzstiefel, who +advanced to meet him, all solemnity of deportment, and with a +church-visitation countenance full of inspection-sermons. Lenette +scarcely turned her swollen eyes towards the windward side of her +husband as he came in at the door. Stiefel kept the strings tight which +held the muscles of his knit face, lest it might unbend before +Firmian’s, which was all beaming soft with kindliness, and thus +commenced: “Mr. Siebenkæs, I came to this house to hand you the money +for your review of Professor Lang; but friendship demands of me a duty +of a far more serious and important kind, that I should exhort you and +constrain you to conduct yourself towards this poor unfortunate wife of +yours here like a true Christian man to a true Christian woman.” “Or +even better, if you like,” he said. “What is it all about, wife?” She +preserved an embarrassed silence. She had asked Stiefel’s advice and +assistance, less for the sake of obtaining them than to have an +opportunity of telling her story. The truth was, that when the +Schulrath came unexpectedly in, while her burst of crying was at its +bitterest, she had really just that very moment sent her checked, +spiny, outer caterpillar-skin (the calico-dress, to wit) away to the +pawnshop; for her husband having pledged his honour, she felt sure +that, beyond a doubt, he would stick those preposterous horns on his +head and really go and hawk them, all over the town, for she well knew +how sacredly he kept his word, and also how utterly he disregarded +“appearances,”—and that both of these peculiarities of his were always +at their fellest pitch at a time of domestic difficulty like the +present. Perhaps she would have told her ghostly counsellor and adviser +nothing about the matter, but contented herself with having a good cry +when he came, if she had had her way (and her dress); but, having +sacrificed both, she needed compensation and revenge. At first she had +merely reckoned up difficulties in indeterminate quantities to him; but +when he pressed her more closely, her bursting heart overflowed and +<i>all</i> her woes streamed forth. Stiefel, contrarily to the laws of +equity (and of several universities), always held the complainant in +any case to be in the right, simply because he spoke <i>first</i>: most men +think impartiality of heart is impartiality of head. Stiefel swore that +he would tell her husband what he ought to be told, and that the calico +should be back in the house that very afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +So this father-confessor began to jingle his bunch of +binding-and-loosing keys in the advocate’s face, and reported to him +his wife’s general confession and the pawning of the dress. When there +are two diverse actions of a person to be given account of—a vexatious +and an agreeable one—the effect depends on which is spoken of the +first; it is the first narrated one which gives the ground-tint to the +listener’s mind, and the one subsequently portrayed only takes rank as +a subdued accessory figure. Firmian should have heard that Lenette +pawned the dress <i>first</i>, while he was still out of doors, and of her +tale-bearing not till afterwards. But you see how the devil brought it +about, as it really did all happen. “What!” (Siebenkæs <i>felt</i>, if not +exactly <i>thought</i>) “What! She makes my rival her confidant and my +judge! I bring her home a heart all kindness and reconciliation, and +she makes a fresh cut in it at once, distressing and annoying me in +this way, on the very last day of the year, with her confounded +chattering and tale-telling.” By this last expression he meant +something which the reader does not yet quite understand; for I have +not yet told him that Lenette had the bad habit of being—rather +ill-bred; wherefore she made common people of her own sex, such as the +bookbinder’s wife, the recipients of her secret thoughts—the electric +discharging-rods of her little atmospheric disturbances; while, at the +same time, she took it ill of her husband that, though he did not, +indeed, admit serving-men and maids and “the vulgar” into his own +mysteries, he yet accompanied them into theirs. +</p> + +<p> +Stiefel (like all people who have little knowledge of the world, and +are not gifted with much tact,—who never assume anything as granted in +the first place, but always go through every subject <i>ab initio</i>)—now +delivered a long, theological, matrimonial-service sort of exhortation +concerning love as between Christian husband and wife, and ended by +insisting on the recall of the calico (his Necker, so to say). This +address irritated Firmian, and that chiefly because (irrespectively of +<i>it</i>) his wife thought he had not any religion, or, at all events, not +so much as Stiefel. “I remember” (he said) “seeing in the history of +France that Gaston, the first prince of the blood, having caused his +brother some little difficulties or other of the warlike sort on one +occasion, in the subsequent treaty of peace bound himself, in a special +article, to love Cardinal Richelieu. Now I think there’s no question +but that an article to the effect that man and wife shall love one +another ought to be inserted as a distinct, separate, secret clause, in +all contracts of marriage; for though love, like man himself, is by +origin eternal and immortal, yet, thanks to the wiles of the serpent, +it certainly becomes mortal enough within a short time. But, as far as +the calico’s concerned, let’s all thank God that <i>that</i> apple of +discord has been pitched out of the house.” Stiefel, by way of offering +up a sacrifice, and burning a little incense before the shrine of his +beloved Lenette, <i>insisted</i> on the return of the calico, and did so +very firmly; for Siebenkæs’s gentle, complaisant readiness to yield to +him, up to this point, in little matters of sacrifice and service, had +led him to entertain the deluded idea that he possessed an irresistible +authority over him. The husband, a good deal agitated now, said, “We’ll +drop the subject, if you please.” “Indeed, we’ll do nothing of the +kind,” said Stiefel; “I must really <i>insist</i> upon it that your wife has +her dress back.” “It can’t be done, Herr Schulrath.” “I’ll advance you +whatever money you require,” cried Stiefel, in a fever of indignation +at this striking and unwonted piece of disobedience. It was now, of +course, more impossible than ever for the advocate to retire from his +position; he shook his head eighty times. “Either <i>you</i> are out of your +mind,” said Stiefel, “or <i>I</i> am; just let me go through my reasons to +you once more.” “Advocates,” said Siebenkæs, “<i>were</i> fortunate enough, +in former times, to have private chaplains of their own; but it was +found that there was no converting any of them, and therefore they are +now exempt from being preached at.” +</p> + +<p> +Lenette wept more bitterly—Stiefel shouted the louder on that account; +in his annoyance at his ill success, he thought it well to repeat his +commands in a ruder and blunter form; of course Siebenkæs resisted more +firmly. Stiefel was a pedant, a class of men which surpasses all others +in a bare-faced, blind, self-conceit, just like an unceasing wind +blowing from all the points of the compass at once (for a pedant even +makes an ostentatious display of his own personal idiosyncrasies). +Stiefel, like a careful and conscientious player, felt it a duty to +thoroughly throw himself into the part he was representing, and carry +it out in all its details, and say, “Either” “Or” Mr. Siebenkæs; +“either the mourning gown comes, or <i>I</i> go, <i>aut-aut</i>. My visits +cannot +be of much consequence, it’s true, still they have I consider, a +certain value, if it were but on Mrs. Siebenkæs’s account.” Firmian, +doubly irritated, firstly at the imperious rudeness and conceit of an +alternative of the sort, and secondly at the lowness of the market +price for which the Rath abandoned their society, could but say, +“Nobody can influence your decision on that point now but yourself. <i>I</i> +most certainly cannot. It will be an easy matter for you, Herr +Schulrath, to give up our acquaintance—though there is no real reason +why you should—but it will not be easy for me to give up yours, +although I shall have no choice.” Stiefel, from whose brow the +sprouting laurels were thus so unexpectedly shorn—and that, too, in +the presence of the woman he loved—had nothing to do but take his +leave; but he did it with three thoughts gnawing at his heart—his +vanity was hurt, his dear Lenette was crying, and her husband was +rebellious and insubordinate, and resisting his authority. +</p> + +<p> +And as the Schulrath said farewell for ever, a bitter, bitter sorrow +stood fixed in the eyes of his beloved Lenette—a sorrow which, though +the hand of time has long since covered it over, I still see there in +its fixity; and she could not go down stairs, as at other times, with +her sorrowing friend, but went back into the dark, unlighted room, +alone with her overflowing breaking heart. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian’s heart laid aside its hardness, though not its coldness, at +the sight of his persecuted wife in her dry, stony grief at this +falling to ruin of every one of her little plans and joys; and he did +not add to her sorrow by a single word of reproach. “You see,” was all +he said, “that it is no fault of mine that the Schulrath gives up our +acquaintance; he ought never to have been told anything about the +matter,—however, it’s all over now.” She made no reply. The hornet’s +sting (which makes a triple stab), the dagger, thrown as by some +revengeful Italian, was left sticking firm in her wound, which +therefore could not bleed. Ah! poor soul; thou hast deprived thyself of +so much! Firmian, however, could not see that he had anything to accuse +himself of; he being the gentlest, the most yielding of men under the +sun, always ruffled all the feathers on his body up with a rustle in an +instant at the slightest touch of <i>compulsion</i>, most especially if it +concerned his honour. He <i>would</i> accept a present, it is true, but only +from Leibgeber, or (on rare occasions) from others in the warmest hours +of soul communion; and his friend and he both held the opinion that, in +friendship, not only was a farthing of quite as much value as a +sovereign, but that a sovereign was worth just as little as a farthing, +and that one is bound to accept the most splendid presents just as +readily as the most trifling; and hence he counted it among the +unrecognised blessings of childhood that children can receive gifts +without any feeling of shame. +</p> + +<p> +In a mental torpor he now sat down in the arm-chair, and covered his +eyes with his hand; and then the mists which hid the future all rolled +away, and showed in it a wide dreary tract of country, full of the +black ashy ruins of burnt homesteads, and of dead bushes of underwood, +and the skeletons of beasts lying in the sand. He saw that the chasm, +or landslip, which had torn his heart and Lenette’s asunder, would go +on gaping wider and wider; he saw, oh! so clearly and cheerlessly, that +his old beautiful love would never come back, that Lenette would never +lay aside her self-willed pertinacity, her whims, the habits of her +daily life; that the narrow limits of her heart and head would remain +fixed firmly for ever; that she would as little learn to understand +him, as get to love him; while, again, her repugnance to him would get +the greater the longer her friend’s banishment endured, and that her +fondness for the latter would increase in proportion. Stiefel’s money, +and his seriousness, and religion, and attachment to herself combined +to tear in two the galling bond of wedlock by the pressure of a more +complex and gentle tie. Sorrowfully did Siebenkæs gaze into a long +prospect of dreary days, all constrained silence, and dumb hostility +and complaint. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette was working in her room in silence, for her wounded heart +shrunk from a word or a look as from a cold fierce wind. It was now +very dark, she wanted no light. On a sudden, a wandering street-singing +woman began to play a harp, and her child to accompany her on a flute, +somewhere in the house downstairs. At this our friend’s bursting heart +seemed to have a thousand gashes inflicted on it to let it bleed gently +away. As nightingales love to sing where there is an echo, so our +hearts speak loudest to music. As these tones brought back to him his +old hopes, almost irrecognisable now,—as he gazed down at his Arcadia +now lying hidden deep, deep, beneath the stream of years, and saw +himself down in it, with all his young fresh wishes, amid his long lost +friends, gazing with happy eyes round their circle, all confidence and +trust, his growing heart hoarding and cherishing its love and truth for +some warm heart yet to be met in the time to come: and as he now burst +into that music with a dissonance, crying, “And I have never found that +heart, and now all is past and over,” and as the pitiless tones brought +pictures of blossomy springs and flowery lands, and circles of loving +friends to pass, as in a camera obscura, before him—<i>him</i> who had +nothing, not one soul in all the land to love him; his steadfast +spirit gave way at last, and sank down on earth to rest as quite +overdone, and nothing soothed him now but that which pained. Suddenly +this sleep-walking music ceased, and the pause clutched, like a +speechless nightmare, tighter at his heart. In the silence he went into +the room and said to Lenette, “Take them down what little we have +left.” But over the latter words his voice broke and failed, for he saw +(by the flare of some potash-burning which was going on opposite) that +all her glowing face was covered with streaming, undried tears, though +when he came in she pretended to be busily wiping the windowpane dimmed +by her breath. She laid the money down on the window. He said, more +gently yet, “Lenette, you will have to take it to them now, or they +will be gone.” She took it; her eyes worn with weeping met his (which +were worn with weeping too); she went, and then their eyes grew +well-nigh dry, so far apart were their two souls already. +</p> + +<p> +They were suffering in that terrible position of circumstances when not +even a moment of mutual and reciprocal emotion can any longer reconcile +and warm two hearts. His whole heart swelled with overflowing +affection, but hers belonged to his no more; he was urged at once by +the wish to love her, and the feeling that it was now impossible, by +the perception of all her shortcomings and the conviction of her +indifference to him. He sat down in the window seat, and leaned his +head upon the sill, where it rested, as it chanced, upon a handkerchief +which she had left there, and which was moist and cold with tears. She +had been solacing herself after the long oppression of the day, with +this gentle effusion, much as we have a vein opened after some severe +contusion. When he touched the handkerchief, an icy shudder crept down +his back, like a sting of conscience, but immediately after it there +came a burning glow as the thought flashed to his mind that her weeping +had been for another person than himself altogether. The singing and +the flute now began again (without the harp this time), and floated in +the rising, falling waves, of a slow-timed song, of which the verses +ended always with the words, “Gone is gone, and dead is dead.” Sorrow +now clutched him in her grasp, like some mantle-fish, casting around +him her dark and suffocating folds. He pressed Lenette’s wet +handkerchief to his eyes hard, and heard (but less distinctly), “Gone +is gone, and dead is dead.” Then of a sudden his whole soul melted and +dissolved at the thought that perhaps that halting heart of his would +let him see no other new year save that of the morrow, and he thought +of himself as dying; and the cold handkerchief, wet with his own tears +now as well as hers, lay cool upon his burning brow, while the notes of +the music seemed to mark like bells each stroke of time, so that its +rapid flight was made distinguishable by the ear, and he saw himself +asleep in a quiet grave, like one in the Grotto of the Serpents, but +with worms in place of the serpents, licking off the burning poison of +life. +</p> + +<p> +The music had ceased. He heard Lenette moving in the next room and +getting a light; he went to her and gave her her handkerchief. But his +heart was so pained and bleeding that he longed to embrace some one, no +matter whom; he was impelled to press his Lenette to his heart, his +Lenette of <i>the past</i> if not of <i>the present</i>, his <i>suffering</i>, +if no +longer his loving, Lenette; at the same time he could not utter one +word of affection, neither had he the slightest wish to do so. He put +his arms round her slowly, unbent, and held her to him, but she turned +her head quickly and coldly away as from a kiss which was not +proffered. This pained him greatly, and he said, “Do you suppose I am +any happier than you are yourself?” He laid his face down on her +averted head, pressed her to him again, and then let her away; and this +vain embrace at an end, his heart cried, “Gone is gone, and dead is +dead.” +</p> + +<p> +The silent room in which the music and the words had ceased to sound +was like some unhappy village from whence the enemy has carried off all +the bells, and where there is nothing but silence all the day and +night, and the church tower is mute as if time itself were past. +</p> + +<p> +As Firmian laid him down on his bed, he thought, “A sleep closes the +old year as if it were one’s last, and ushers in the new as it does, +our own lives; and I sleep on towards a future all anxiety, vague of +form, and darkly veiled. Thus does man sleep at the gate behind which +the dreams are barred; but although his dreams are but a step or two—a +minute or two—within that gate, he cannot tell <i>what</i> dreams await him +at its opening; whether in the brief unconscious night beasts of prey +with glaring eyes are lying in wait to dash upon him, or smiling +children to come trooping round him in their play; nor if, when the +cloudy shapes beyond that mystic door come about him, their clasp is to +be the fond embrace of love, or the murderous clutch of death.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch10"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">A LONELY NEW-YEAR’S DAY—THE LEARNED SCHALASTER—WOODEN-LEG OF +APPEAL—CHAMBER POSTAL DELIVERY—THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY, AND +BIRTH-DAY OF THE YEAR 1786. +</p> + +<p> +I really cannot wish my hero a happy new year on a new year’s day when, +on his awaking in the morning, he rolls his swollen eyeballs heavily in +their sockets towards the dawn, and then buries his worn and stupefied +head deep again in his pillow, as he does now. A man who scarcely ever +sheds a tear is always attacked in this way by physical, as a +consequence of moral, pain. He lay in bed much later than usual, +thinking over what he had done, and what he had now to do. He awoke, +feeling; much cooler towards Lenette than he had done when he went to +bed. When two hearts can no longer be brought together by the influence +of some mutual, warm emotion, when the glow of enthusiasm no longer +links them together, still less can they mingle and unite when the glow +has passed away, and chilly reserve has resumed its sway. There is a +certain half-and-half state of partial reconciliation in which the +vertical index of the jewel-balance, in its glass-case, is turned by +the lightest breath from the tongue of a third person; to-day, alas! +the scale on Firmian’s side sunk a little, and that on Lenette’s went +down altogether. He prepared himself, however, and dreaded at the same +time, to give and to return the new year greetings. He took heart, and +entered the room with his usual hearty step, as if nothing had +happened. She had let the coffee-pot turn into a refrigerator rather +than call him, and was standing with her back to him, at the drawer of +the <i>commode</i>, tearing hearts to pieces, to see what was inside them. +The hearts in question were printed new year’s wishes in verse, which +she had received, in happier days, from her friends in Augspurg; the +kindly wishes were hidden behind groups of hearts clipped out and +twined together in spiral lines. As the Holy Virgin gets behung with +“<i>assignat</i>” hearts of wax, so do other virgins with paper ones; for +with these fair maidens all warmth and enthusiasm gets the name of +“heart,” much as map-makers fancy that the outline of burning Africa +has a considerable resemblance to a heart. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian could well divine how many a longing sigh the poor soul had +heaved over so many a ruined wish and hope, and all her mournful +comparisons of the present time—with those smiling days gone by—and +all that sorrow and the memory of the past spake to the gentle, tender +heart. Alas! since even the happy greet the new year with sighs, the +wretched may well be allowed a tear or two. He said his “good morning” +gently, and had he received a gentle answer, would have gone so far as +to add <i>his</i> wishes to the stock of printed ones; but Lenette, who had +been oftener hurt, and more deeply too, on the previous day, than he +had, snarled back at him a cold and hasty reply. So that he could not +offer any wishes; she offered none; and thus stonily and thus miserably +they went elbowing one another through the gate of the new year. +</p> + +<p> +I must say it; he had been looking forward for something like eight +weeks to the happiness of this new year’s morning—to the blissful +union of their hearts—to the thousands of loving wishes which he would +offer—to their close embraces and happy silences of lips upon lips! +Ah! how different it all was; cold, deathly cold! On some other +occasion, when I have more paper, I must explain at full length why and +wherefore his satirical vein served the purpose of a ferment, a leaven +or yeast, or, say a kind of irrigating engine to that sensitive heart +of his of which he was both proud and ashamed at once. The royal burgh +of Kuhschnappel itself had more to do with it than anything else. Upon +this town, as upon some others in Germany, the dew of sensibility has +never fallen (as if these places were made of metal), whilst their +inhabitants have provided themselves with hearts of bone, on which, as +on frozen limbs, and witches bearing the <i>stigmata</i> of the devil, it is +impossible to inflict wounds of any consequence to speak of. Amid a +population possessed of this sort of frigidity, one is, of course, +inclined to pardon—and even go out of one’s way in search of—a little +warmth, even of an exaggerated kind,—whereas a man who had been living +about 1785 in Leipzig, where nearly all hearts and arteries were +injected full of the spirit of tears, might have been disposed to carry +his humorous indignation at that circumstance a little too far, in the +same way that cooks dish up watery vegetables with more pepper in wet +weather than in dry. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette went three times to church that day, not that there was +anything extraordinary in that. It is not so much with respect to the +church-goers that the words “three times” in this connection, alarming +as they are, horrify one. The church-goers may sometimes, perhaps, be +all the better for going so often; but it is for the sake of the +unfortunate clergy who are obliged to preach so many times in one day, +that they may think themselves lucky if all that happens to them is +that they go to the devil and don’t lose their voices into the bargain. +The first time a man preaches, he certainly moves <i>himself</i> more than +anybody else, and becomes his own proselyte; but when it comes to the +millionth time or so of his laying down the moral law, it must be much +the same with him as with the Egerian peasants, who drink the Egerian +waters every day, and consequently cease to be susceptible to their +derivative qualities, however visitors may be affected by them. +</p> + +<p> +At dinner our melancholy pair sat silent, except that the husband, +seeing the wife preparing to go to the afternoon service at church, +which she had not been in the habit of attending for some time, asked +her who was going to preach. “Most probably Schulrath Stiefel,” she +said, although he usually preached only in the morning, but just now +the evening preacher couldn’t preach, he had received “a chastisement +from God—he had put out his collar-bone.” At another time Siebenkæs +would have had a good deal to say as touching the latter clause of her +sentence; but on the present occasion (circumstances being as they +were), all he did was to strike his plate with one of the prongs of his +fork, and then hold it up to one of his ears, while he stopped the +other; this droning bass, this humming harmony, bore his tortured soul +away upon the waves of music, and this echoing sound-board, this +vibrating bell-tongue, seemed to be singing to him (by way of new +year’s greeting), “Hearest thou not the distant bell ringing at the +close of thy chill life’s high mass? The question is, shalt thou, when +next new year’s day comes, be able to hear; or lying, by that time, +crumbling into dust?” +</p> + +<p> +After dinner he looked out of window, directing his gaze less to the +street than to the sky. There, as it chanced, he saw two mock suns, and +almost in the zenith the half of a rainbow with a paler one +intersecting it. These tinted stars began strangely to sway his soul, +making it sad, as if he saw in them the reflected image of his own dim, +pale, shattered life. For to man, when swayed by emotion, Nature is +ever a great mirror, all emotion too; it is only to him who is +satisfied and at rest that she seems nothing but a cold, dead window +between him and the world beyond. +</p> + +<p> +When he was alone in the room after dinner, and the jubilant hymns from +the church, and the glad song of a canary in a neighbour’s room came +upon his weary soul like the movement and the tumult of all the joy of +his youth, now buried alive in the tomb; and when the bright magic +sunshine broke into his chamber, and light cloud-shadows slid athwart +the spot of light upon the floor, questioning his sick, moaning heart +in a thousand melancholy tropes, and saying, “Is it not thus with all +things? Are not your own days fleeting by like vapours through a chilly +sky, above a dead earth, floating away towards the night?”—he could +but open his swelling heart by means of the soft-edged sword of music, +that so the nearest and heaviest of the drops of his sorrow might be +set free to flow. He struck a single triad chord upon his piano, and +struck it once again, letting it gradually die away; the tones floated +away as the clouds had, the sweet harmony trembled more slowly and more +slowly, grew fainter and fainter, and ceased at last; silence, as of +the grave, was all that was left. As he listened, his breath and his +heart stopped, a faintness came over him which extended to his very +soul; and then—and then—as floods wash the dead from out of the +churches and the graves, in this morbid hour of dreams, the stream of +his heart came flowing again, and bearing upon its billows a new corpse +from out the future, torn all unshrouded from its earthly bed; it was +his own body; he was dead. He looked out of window towards the +comforting and reassuring light and star of life, but the voice within +him cried on still, “Do not deceive thyself; before the new year’s +wishes are said again, thou wilt have departed hence.” +</p> + +<p> +When a shivering heart is thus all shorn of its leaves and standing +bare, every breeze that touches it is a freezing blast. With what a +soft, warm, gentle touch Lenette would have had to touch it so as not +to startle it. A heart in this condition is like a clairvoyante, who +feels a chill as of death in every hand which touches from beyond the +charmed circle. +</p> + +<p> +He determined to join the corpse-lottery (as it was called) that very +day, so as to be able at all events to pay the toll or tax on his +departure for the next world. He told Lenette so, but she thought this +was only another of his harpings on the subject of the mourning dress. +Thus cloudily passed the first day of the year, and the first week was +even more rainy. The garden-hedge and fencing round Lenette’s love for +Stiefel were completely cut down and pulled up now, and the love was to +be clearly seen of every passer-by. Every evening at the time when the +Schulrath used formerly to come, vexation and regret graved a deeper +furrow on her round young face, which as time went on turned wholly +into a piece of carving fretted by the hand of grief. She found out the +days when he was to preach, so that she might go and hear him, and +whenever a funeral passed, she went to the window to see him. The +bookbinder’s wife was her “corresponding member,” from whom she +constantly drew fresh discoveries concerning the Schulrath, and +repeated the old ones with her over and over again. What an amount of +warmth the Schulrath must have gained by reason of his focal distance, +and her husband have lost on account of his proximity will be at once +apparent; just as the earth derives least warmth from the sun when they +are nearest together, i. e. in winter! Moreover another event came just +then to pass which increased Lenette’s aversion. Von Blaize had +secretly circulated a report that Siebenkæs was an atheist and no +Christian. Respectable old maiden ladies and the clergy, form a +charming contrast to the vindictive Romans under the Empire, who often +accused, the most innocent people possible of being Christians, in +order that they might obtain a martyr’s crown. The old maids and +parsons aforesaid rather take the part of a man who is in a position of +this kind, and deny that he is a Christian; and in this they contrast, +likewise with the Romans and Italians of the present day, who always +say “there are four Christians here,” when they mean “four men.” In St. +Ferieux, near Besançon, the most virtuous girl used to be presented +with a lace veil of the value of five shillings by way of a prize; and +people like Blaize are fond of throwing a prize for virtue of this +kind, namely, a moral veil, over the good. This is why they are fond of +calling thinking men infidels, and the heterodox wolves, whose teeth +help to smooth and polish,—which is the reason why wolves are engraved +upon the best steel blades. +</p> + +<p> +When Siebenkæs first told his wife this report of Blaize’s (that he was +no Christian, if not, indeed, altogether an infidel), she didn’t pay +very much attention to it, inasmuch as it seemed out of the question +such a thing could be true of a man to whom she had united herself in +the holy state of matrimony. It was not until sometime afterwards that +she remembered that, one month when there had been a long period of dry +weather he had spoken disparagingly (without the least hesitation), not +only of the Roman Catholic processions (for she did not think <span class="sc2">THEY WERE</span> +of very much use herself), but concerning the Protestant’s prayers for +rain, inquiring, “Do the processions, miles long, in the Arabian +deserts, which go by the name of caravans, ever lead to the production +of a single cloud in the sky, let them pray for rain as hard as they +choose?” And “Why do the clergy get up processions only for rain or +fine weather? why not to get rid of a severe winter, when at all events +those who took part in the processions would feel a little warmer; or, +in Holland, for bright sunny weather and the dispersion of fog; or +against the aurora-borealis in Greenland?” “But what he wondered at +most,” he said, “was why those converters of the heathen, who pray so +often, and with so much success for the sun when he’s only behind a +cloud or two, should not supplicate for him in circumstances of +infinitely greater importance—in the polar regions, namely, where for +months at a time he never appears even when the sky is altogether +cloudless? Or why,” he asked in the last place, “do they take no steps +to petition against the great solar eclipses (which are seldom very +enjoyable occurrences), suffering themselves to be outdone by savage +nations in this respect, for as the latter <i>do</i> howl and pray them +away?” Many speeches, in themselves innocuous at first, nay sweet, +acquire poisonous properties in the storehouse of time, as sugar does +when kept for thirty years in a warehouse.<a name="div2Ref_56" href="#div2_56"><sup>[56]</sup></a> These few words, +candidly spoken out in the course of common conversation, took a great +hold upon Lenette now that she sate under Stiefel’s pulpit (made of +apostles all carpentered up together), and heard him offering up one +prayer after another, for, or against (as the case might be), sickness, +government, child-birth, harvest, &c., &c.! How dear, on the other +hand, Peltzstiefel grew to her; his very sermons became, in the most +charming manner, regular love-letters to her heart. And indeed +clericality does, at all times, stand in a very close relation to the +feminine heart; that’s why “hearts” formerly meant the clergy on German +playing cards. +</p> + +<p> +Now what all this time did Stanislaus Siebenkæs think and do? Two +contradictory things. If a hard word escaped him, he was sorry for the +feeble, forsaken soul, whose whole rose-border of enjoyment had been +hoed up, whose first love for the Schulrath lay languishing in sorrow +and famine; for the thousand charms of that imprisoned nature of hers +would have opened in all their beauty to some heart she loved, which +<i>his</i> was not. “And can I not see,” he said further, “how impossible it +is that the pin’s or needle’s point can act as a lightning conductor to +the sultry, lightning-charged clouds of her life, in the same way that +the pen’s point does for mine. One <i>can </i><span class="sc2">WRITE</span> a good deal of one’s +mind, but one can’t <i>stitch</i> very much off it. And when I consider what +swimming-belts and cork-jackets for the deepest floods <i>I</i> am prepared +with, in the shape of the self-contemplation of the Emperor Antoninus +and in Arrianus Epictetus, of neither of whom <i>she</i> knows even the +binding, let alone the name (to say nothing of my astronomy and +psychology); and what splendid hands at the fire engine-pumps <i>they</i> +are to me when I blaze up in a conflagration of anger as I did just +now, while <i>she</i> has to let <i>her</i> anger burn itself out, verily I +ought +to be ten times more gentle with her, instead of being ten times more +irritable.” If it happened, on the other hand, that he had not given +but had <i>received</i> a few hard words, he thought of her warm longing for +the Schulrath which she could so readily increase and magnify in secret +during her wholly mechanical work, to any extent; and of the continual +yielding of his own too soft heart; a thing for which his strong-souled +Leibgeber would have scolded him, while his wife would have done so for +the contrary defect, which she was not likely to encounter in her stiff +unyielding Stiefel, judging by the recent unceremoniousness of style in +which he, the other day, gave his notice of the calling in of his +capital of Regard. +</p> + +<p> +In this frame of mind, one day when his spirit was heavy with anger, he +put to her, as she was starting again to go to the Schulrath’s evening +sermon, the simple little question, why it was she used formerly to go +so seldom to the evening service, and now went so often? She answered +that it was because the evening preacher, Mr. Schalaster, always +used to preach in the evenings, but that since he had put out his +collar-bone the Schulrath had taken his duty. Heaven forbid that she +should go to the evening services when Mr. Schalaster’s collar-bone was +well again. By slow degrees he drew out of her that she considered this +young Mr. Schalaster a most dangerous disseminator of false doctrine, a +man who by no means adhered to Luther’s bible, but believed in +<i>Mosheh</i>, and in Jesos Christos, Petros and Paulos, and, in fact, +<i>os’d</i> all the Apostles in such a manner as to be an offence to all +Christian folks; nay he had gone the length of naming the Holy +Jerusalem in such an extraordinary way that she couldn’t so much +as say it after him; it was soon after this that he had put out his +collar-bone, but far be it from her to judge the man. “No, don’t, +dear,” her husband said, “perhaps the young gentleman may be a little +nearsighted, or he mayn’t know his Greek Testament so well as he ought, +the <i>u</i>’s in it are sometimes a good deal like <i>o</i>’s. Ah! how many +Schalasters there are who do in their several sciences and doctrines, +say Petros for Petrus, and where there’s not the slightest occasion, +and nothing in the shape of a stumbling-block in the path, breed +dissension among mankind by means of consanguineous vowels.” +</p> + +<p> +On this particular occasion, however, Schalaster drew our couple a +little nearer together again. It was a satisfaction to Siebenkæs to +find that he had been a little mistaken up to this point, and that it +was not only love to Stiefel which had taken her to evening church, but +that regard for purity of doctrine had something to do with it as well. +The distinction was fine, it is true; but in time of need one catches +at the minutest fragment of comfort; and Siebenkæs was delighted that +his wife wasn’t <i>quite</i> so deeply in love with the Schulrath as he had +been supposing. Let no one hear speak despairingly of the delicate +gossamer web which supports us and our happiness. If we <i>do</i> spin and +draw it out of <i>ourselves</i>, as the spider does hers, yet it bears us +pretty firmly up, and, like the spider, we hang safe and sound in the +middle of it, while the storm-wind rocks both our web and us uninjured +to and fro. +</p> + +<p> +From this day Siebenkæs went straightway back to his only friend in the +place, Stiefel, whose little mistake he had forgiven from his heart +long long since—half an hour after it happened, I believe. He knew +that the sight of him would be a consolation to the exiled evangelist +in his Patmos-chamber, and that his wife would find a consolation in it +too. Yea, he carried greetings which had never been intrusted to him +backwards and forwards between the two. +</p> + +<p> +The little scraps of news of the Schulrath, which he would let drop of +an evening, were to Lenette as the young green shoots which the +partridge scratches up from beneath the snow. At the same time, I am +not concealing the fact that I am very sorry both for him and for her; +although I am not such a wretched partisan of either as to withhold my +love and my sympathy from two people who are mutually misunderstanding +and making war upon each other. +</p> + +<p> +Out of this grey sultry sky, whose electrical machines were being +charged fuller and fuller every hour, there broke, at last, a first +harsh peal of thunder—Firmian lost his law suit. The Heimlicher +was the catskin rubber, the foxtail switch, which charged the +Inheritance Chamber, the goldsmith’s pitch-cake of Justice, full of +pocket-lightning. But the suit was adjudged to be lost on the simple +ground that the young notary, Giegold, with whose notarial instrument +Siebenkæs had armed himself, was not as yet duly matriculated. There +cannot be very many persons unaware that in Saxony no legal instrument +is valid unless drawn up by a notary who has been duly matriculated, +while, at the same time, documentary evidence can be of no greater +force in another country than of that which it possessed in the country +where it was drawn up. Firmian lost his suit, and his inheritance along +with it. However, the latter remained untouched, for, perhaps, nothing +can keep a sum of money safer from the attacks of thieves, clients, and +lawyers, than the fact of its being the subject of a lawsuit—nobody +can touch it then. The sum is clearly specified in all the documents, +and these documents would have, themselves, to be got out of the way +before the <i>money</i> could be got at. Similarly, the good man of the farm +rejoices when the weevil has papered his cornricks all over with white, +because then the corn which has not had the heart of it eaten out by +the spinner is safe against the ravages of all other corn worms. +</p> + +<p> +A lawsuit is never more easily won than when it is lost—one lodges an +appeal. After payment of the costs, ordinary and extraordinary, the law +concedes the <i>beneficium appellationis</i> (benefit of appeal to a higher +tribunal), although this benefit-farce cannot be of much avail to +anybody who has not had certain other benefits conferred upon him +beforehand. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs had the right to appeal; he could with ease adduce evidence +of his name and wardship through a duly matriculated Leipzig notary. +All he wanted was the worktool—the weapon for the fight, which was +also the subject of it—to wit, money. During the ten days which the +appeal (fœtus-like) had wherein to come to maturity, he went about +sickly and thoughtful. Each of these decimal days exercised upon him +one of the persecutions of the early Christians and decimated his hours +of happiness. To apply to his Leibgeber, in Bayreuth, for money, the +distance was too long and the time too short; for Leibgeber, to judge +by his silence, had probably leapt ever many a mountain on the +leaping-pole, the climbing-spurs, of his silhouette-clipping. Firmian +cast everything to the winds, and went to his old friend, Stiefel, that +he might comfort himself and tell all the story. Stiefel fumed at the +sight of marshy bottomless paths of the law, and pressed upon Siebenkæs +the acceptance of a pair of stilts whereon to traverse them, namely, +the money necessary for the appeal. Ah! this to the disconsolate, +longing, Schulrath was almost tantamount to another clasp of Lenette’s +beloved, clinging hand; his honest blood, coagulated by all these days +of mere icy cold, thawed once more and began to flow. It was through no +cheating of his sense of honour that Firmian, who preferred starving to +borrowing, at once accepted Stiefel’s money, looking upon each dollar +as a little stone wherewith to pave the path of the law, and so pass +over it unbemired. His principal idea was that he would soon be dead, +and that, at all events, his helpless widow would have the enjoyment of +his inheritance. +</p> + +<p> +He appealed to the Supreme Court and ordered another instrument to be +drawn up in Leipzig. +</p> + +<p> +These fresh nail-scratches of fortune, on the one hand, and Stiefel’s +kindness and money, on the other, laid up a fresh accumulation of +oxygenous, or acidifying, matter in Lenette, and, at the same time, the +acid of her ill-humour became (as acids in general do) stronger in a +time of frost, and on this subject I shall here communicate the few +meteorological observations which I have to make. +</p> + +<p> +They are as follows:—Since the misunderstanding with Stiefel, Lenette +was mute the whole day long, recovering from this lingual paralysis +only in the presence of strangers. I presume there must exist some +physical cause for the phenomenon that a woman is frequently unable to +speak except in the presence of strangers, and we should be able to +discover the reason of the converse phenomenon, that a mesmerized +subject can converse only with the mesmerizer or with persons who are +<i>en rapport</i> with him. In St. Kilda everybody coughs when a stranger +arrives in the island, and although coughing is not exactly speaking, +perhaps, yet it is a preliminary whirring of the wheels of the +mechanism of speech. This periodic or intermittent dumbness, which, +perhaps, like the non-periodic or continued form of the complaint may +be the result of the suppression of (surface) outbreaks, is nothing new +to the medical world. Wepfer mentions the case of a paralytic woman who +could say nothing except the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed; and cases of +dumbness are of frequent occurrence in matrimonial life, in which the +wife can say nothing to the husband beyond a word or two of the +extremest necessity. There was a fever-patient at Wittenberg who +couldn’t speak a word the whole day long except between 12 and 1 +o’clock; and we meet with plenty of poor dumb women who are only in a +condition to speak for about a quarter of an hour in the course of the +day, or can just manage to get out a word or two in the evening, and +are obliged to have recourse to <i>dumb-bells</i> by way of helping out +their meaning, using for that purpose plates, keys, and doors. +</p> + +<p> +This dumbness, at last, so worked upon poor Siebenkæs that he caught it +himself. He mimicked his wife as a father does his children for their +good. His satiric humour often had a good deal the appearance of +satiric <i>ill</i>-humour; but this was done with the sole view of keeping +himself at all times perfectly calm and cool. When chamber-wenches +distracted him most utterly as he was in the depths of his auctorial +sugar-refinery and beer-brewery, by converting (with Lenette’s +assistance) his room into a regular herald’s chancellery and orator’s +tribune, he could always bring his wife, at all events, down from the +platform by striking three blows on his desk with his bird-sceptre +(this was by virtue of an arrangement which he had come to with her on +the subject). Also, on the many occasions when he would find himself +sitting over against these talking Cicero-heads, powerless to frame an +idea, or to write a line, and regretting the loss (not so much to +himself as to the innumerable mass of persons of the highest condition +and intelligence) of the thousands of ideas which were thus abstracted +by these adepts in the art of talk—he could give a tremendous thump +with his sceptre-ruler, upon the table, such as one gives to a pond to +make the frogs cease croaking. What pained him most with regard to this +robbery of posterity was the thought that his book would go down to it +shorn of its fair and due proportions as a consequence of all this +fugitive chatter. It is a beautiful thing that all authors, even those +who deny the immortality of their own souls, seldom have anything to +say against that of their names. As Cicero declared that he would +believe in the second life, even were there none, they cleave to a +belief in the second, eternal, life of their names, however their +critics may demonstrate the contrary. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs now most distinctly intimated to his wife, that he should not +speak any more at all, not even concerning matters of the utmost +necessity, and this because he simply could not and would not be +distracted or chilled in the fervour of composition, by long angry +discussions concerning talking, washing, or the like, neither be +induced to lose his temper with her about such matters. Any given +matter of perfect indifference can be spoken of in ten different tones +and mistones, and, therefore, with the view of not depriving his wife +of whatever enjoyment she might derive from speculating as to the +<i>tones</i> in which things were capable of being said, he gave her to +understand that for the future he would speak to her only in writing. +</p> + +<p> +I am ready, here, with an explanation of the fullest description as to +this proceeding. That grave and earnest person, the bookbinder, was +exercised in his mind, all through the ecclesiastical year, by nothing +to such an extent as by the conduct of his “Rascal,” as he styled his +son, a bit of a <i>mauvais sujet</i>, who was a better hand at reading a +book than at binding one—always clipping the edges askew, or cropping +them too closely, or doubling or halving the dimensions of the damp +sheets by screwing the press too tight. Now these were matters of a +sort which his father could by no means endure, and he lost his temper +over them to such an extent that he would not <i>speak</i> to this child of +the devil and his realm, not so much as a syllable. Such sumptuary laws +and golden rules connected with bookmaking, therefore, as he had to +communicate to his son he delivered to his wife, in her capacity of +postmistress, and she (using her needle by way of rod of office) would +then get up in her distant corner of the room and transmit the commands +of the father to the son, who would be planing away at no very great +distance. The son, who had to deliver all <i>his</i> questions and answers +to the postmistress in the same manner, approved of this arrangement +most thoroughly; his father’s tongue gave much less trouble than +before. The father got into the habit of this system and ceased to +treat of anything by word of mouth, no matter what. He even got to +trying to express his views concerning his son’s proceedings by means +of looks, darting burning glances at him, like a lover, as he sat +opposite to him. An eye full of glances, however (notwithstanding the +fact that there are ocular letters, as well as palatals, labials, and +glossals), is at best but a box of confused pearl type. But as, by +good fortune, the invention of writing, and the institution of the +post-office have enabled a man, who is drifting round the North Pole +on a slab of ice, to communicate with another who is sitting in a +palm-tree amidst parrots in the torrid zone—this father and son (when, +thus divided, they sat opposite to one another at the work-table) were +provided with a means of sweetening and lightening their separation by +help of an epistolary correspondence carried on across the table. +Business letters of the utmost importance were conveyed from one to the +other unsealed, and in complete safety, for the mail bags, the +mail-packet of this penny-post, consisted of a pair of fingers. The +interchange of letters and couriers between these two silent powers +took place over roads so smooth, and by such an admirable system of +“Poste aux Anes” without interruption and free from all delay, that the +father could, without difficulty, receive a reply on a subject of +importance from his correspondent within one minute of its despatch +(such was the facility of communication), in fact, they were quite as +near to one another as if they had been next door neighbours. I would +here beg any traveller who may visit Kuhschnappel before I do so to saw +off the two corners of the table, of which the one served as <i>Bureau +d’Intelligence</i> to the other, put both these bureaux in his pocket and +exhibit them to the curious in some great city or company—or to me in +Hof. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs partially copied the bookbinder’s system. He cut out brief +letters of decretal in anticipation, to be ready for the occasions when +they should be required. If Lenette put an unforeseen question to which +there wasn’t an answer in his letter-bag, he would write three lines +and pass them across the table. Such notes of hand or orders in council +as had to be renewed daily, he ordered the return of in a standing +requisition, so as to save paper, and not be obliged to write a fresh +order on this subject every day; for he merely passed this particular +paper back across the table again. But what said Lenette to all this? I +shall be better able to answer this question after relating what +follows here. There was only one occasion on which he <i>spoke</i> in this +deaf and dumb institution of a house of his; it was while he was eating +salad out of an earthenware-dish, which had poetical as well as +pictorial flowers on it by way of ornament. Lifting the salad with his +fork, he disclosed to view the little <i>carmen</i> which bordered this +dish, and which ran as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Peace feeds, but strife<br/> +Consumes our life.” +</p> + +<p> +Whenever he lifted up a forkful of his salad, he was in a position to +read one or the other foot of this didactic poem; and he did so aloud. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, and what said Lenette to all this?” we inquired above. Not a +word, I answer. She wasn’t going to let <i>his</i> sulks and silence +diminish <i>hers</i> in the slightest degree, for in the end it seemed clear +to her that he was holding his tongue out of sheer ill-temper, and she +wasn’t going to be outdone by him in that respect. And, in fact, he +carried matters further and further every day, continually passing new +broken tables-of-the-law across the table to her, or carrying them +round to her side. I shall not catalogue the whole of them, but merely +quote a few specimens, e. g. ‘The Forty-eight-pounder Paper’ (he +gratified himself by continually inventing new titles for these +missives), of which the contents were: “Stop the mouth of that tall +sewing creature there, who sees perfectly well how busy I am with my +writing, or I shall seize her by that throat with which she’s baiting +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“The ‘Official Gazette’ paragraph:”—“Let me have a little drop of some +of your dirty wash-water; I want to get the ink off these raccoon paws +of mine.” “The Pastoral Letter:”—“I want to get a glance or so at +‘Epictetus on what Man has to endure,’ could I find a moment of some +sort of peace; don’t disturb me.” “The Pin-paper:”—“I happen to be in +the middle of a satire, of the hardest and severest nature, on the +subject of women; take that screeching bookbinderess down stairs to the +hairdresseress, and yell away there as sprightlily as ye have a mind.” +“Torture-bench Note,” or rather “Folio:”—“I have held out, this +forenoon, through well-nigh as much as is possible; I have fought my +course through besoms, feather-dusters, women’s bonnets, and women’s +tongues. Is there no hope that, now that evening is falling, I may have +a little, brief hour of peace, in which to try to get some slight idea +of the sense of these terrible Acts of Parliament before me here?” +Nobody can convince me that it was any blunting of the stings of these +visiting cards of his (which he left upon her so very frequently), that +he occasionally translated writing into speech, and when other people +were present, jested with them concerning cognate subjects. Thus he +said on one occasion to Meerbitzer, the hairdresser, in Lenette’s +presence, “Monsieur Meerbitzer, it’s incredible what my housekeeping +costs in the course of the year. Why, that wife of mine, there as she +stands, gets through half-a-ton of food or so by herself alone, and” +(when she and the barber both beat their hands together above their +heads) “so do I, too.” He showed it to Meerbitzer, printed in +Schötzer’s book, that every one <i>does</i> consume about that quantity of +sustenance in the course of the year; but did anybody in that room +fancy such a thing was possible? +</p> + +<p> +Ill-will towards a person is a kind of catalepsy of the mind, and so is +sulking; and in this mental catalepsy, as in the bodily, every limb +remains immovably fixed in the position which it chanced to be in when +the attack came on. Moreover, mental catalepsy has this feature in +common with corporeal—that women are more subject to it than men. +Consequently the only effect upon Lenette of her husband’s little joke +(which <i>had</i> the outward semblance of being a piece of ill temper, +although it was in reality only carried on with a view to the complete +maintaining of his own calmness and self-control) was to redouble her +stiffness and chilliness. Yet how very little she would have minded it +had she but seen Stiefel even once in the course of the week, and had +not the cares connected with those house expenses of hers (which melted +down and swallowed up all the pewter-plattery of the eagle’s perch) +decomposed and dried up the very last drop of happy warm blood in her +wretched heart. Ah! sorrow-laden soul! But, as things were, there was +no help for her, nor any for him whom she so terribly misunderstood. +</p> + +<p> +Poverty is the only burden which grows heavier in proportion to the +number of dear ones who have to help to bear it. Had Firmian been +alone, he would scarcely have so much as glanced at the holes and ruts +in the streets of life; for destiny lays down little piles of stones +for us every thirty steps with which we may fill the holes up. And he +had a haven of refuge, a diving-bell, to fly to in the strongest gale +that might blow—in the shape of his watch (to say nothing of his +glorious philosophy), which he could always turn into cash. But that +wife of his, and all her funereal music and Kyrie Eleisons, and a +thousand things besides, and Leibgeber’s inexplicable silence, and his +growing ill-health—the continual immixture of all these impure matters +into the breeze of his life converted it into a sultry, unnerving +sirocco blast—a wind which creates in a man a dry, hot, sickly thirst, +which often makes him put that into his breast which soldiers put into +their mouths to cure bodily thirst, namely, cold powder and lead. +</p> + +<p> +On the 11th of February, Firmian sought relief. +</p> + +<p> +On the 11th of February, Euphrosyne’s day, 1767, Lenette was born. +</p> + +<p> +She had often mentioned this to him, and oftener yet to her +sewing-customers. However, he would have forgotten all about it but for +the Superintendent-General Ziethen, who had printed a book in which he +reminded him of the 11th of February. The superintendent had given due +notice, in this work of his, that on the 11th of February, 1786, a +segment of South Germany would be sent down, by an earthquake, into the +realms below, like so much corn laid by a summer storm. As a +consequence, the Kuhschnapplers would have been lowered, upon the +dropped coffin-cords or lowered drawbridges of sinking soil, into hell +by entire companies at a time, instead of going there as single +<i>envoyés</i>, as theretofore was the usage. However, nothing came of all +this. +</p> + +<p> +On the day before the earthquake, and before Lenette’s birthday, +Firmian repaired to the lifting-crane—the springboard of his +soul—namely, the old height where his Henry had taken his farewell. +The forms of his friend and wife stood, dim and vague, before his +soul’s sight. He thought upon the circumstance that since his friend +had left him there had been about the same number of ruptures and +divisions in his married life as, according to Moreri, took place in +the Church from the time of the Apostles down to Luther’s days, namely, +124. Labourers, innocent and simple, silent and happy, were smoothing +the spring’s path. He had passed by gardens where they were clearing +the moss and the autumn-leaves away from the trees—by beehives and +vine-stocks being transplanted, cleaned, pruned—by osiers being +trimmed and dressed. The sun shone bright and warm over the land, all +rich with buds; and suddenly he was struck by one of these sensations +which often come upon imaginative men—and this is why these are +somewhat apt to be a little fanciful and visionary—it seemed to him as +if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart, but in some warm and tender +tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were expanding and breaking away +through some chink in its prison, and melting into a tone of music—a +blue æther wave. +</p> + +<p> +“I must and will forgive her, on her birthday,” cried his softened +heart and soul; “I have little doubt that I have been too hard upon her +all this time.” He resolved that he would have the Schulrath into the +house, and the calico-gown beforehand, and make her a birthday present +of the pair, and of a new sewing-cushion. He grasped his watch-chain +and pulled out that Elijah’s and Faust’s mantle, which was to bear him +away over all his ills by being converted into cash. He went home with +every corner of his heart glowing with sunshine, artfully made his +watch stop, and told Lenette he must take it to the watchmaker’s to be +repaired (and indeed its movements hitherto had been like those of the +planets above us, a forward movement at the beginning of the +terrestrial or clock-day, afterwards stationary, and latterly +retrograde). In this fashion he concealed his projects from her. He +took the watch himself to the market-place and sold it, though he knew +very well he would never be able to write with comfort unless it was +ticking on his table (like the nobleman mentioned by Locke, who could +only dance in one particular room, in which there was an old box +standing). Also, in the evening, the redeemed, checked shirt-of-blood, +or seedbag of evil weeds, was clandestinely introduced into the house. +Towards evening Firmian went to the Schulrath, and with all the warmth +of his eloquent heart told him of his resolve and everything connected +with it—the birthday, the return of the calico, his request to <i>him</i> +to come and see them again, his own imminent death, and his resignation +to everything. Warm breath of life was breathed into Stiefel, long +languishing in absence and love (which, together, had gnawed him into +paleness, as lime does the shadows of a fresco), when he heard that on +the morrow the beloved voice of his Lenette, longed for during all this +weary time (<i>she</i> could hear <i>his</i>, by-the-by, in church, of course), +would once more stir the chords of his being. +</p> + +<p> +I must here just glance at a defence, for a moment, as well as an +accusation. The former relates to my hero, who seems rather to have +rumpled his honour’s patent of nobility to a greater or less extent, by +having made this request to Stiefel; but, then, we must consider that +his <i>intention</i> in making it was to do a great kindness to his +suffering wife, and a small one to himself. The fact is, that the very +strongest and roughest of men cannot hold out in the long run against +the everlasting feminine sulking and undermining. For the sheer sake of +a little peace and quietness, a man who may have sworn a thousand oaths +before marriage that he <i>would</i> have his own way in that condition of +life, comes, in the long run, to let his wife have <i>hers</i>. The +remainder of Siebenkæs’ conduct I have no need to defend, since ’tis +not possible to do so, but only necessary. The accusation to which I +alluded is against my own fellow-labourers, and it is—that they differ +so widely in their romances from this Biography and from real life, in +describing the ruptures and reconciliations of their characters as +being possible, and as actually occurring, in periods of time so brief +that one might stand by and time them with a stop-watch in one’s hand. +But a man does <i>not</i> break with a person he loves all in an instant; +the rendings alternate with little re-bindings with bands of silk and +flowers, till at length the long alternation between seeking and +shunning ends in complete separation, and it is then, and not till +then, that we wretched creatures are at our wretchedest. The same is +generally true of the <i>union</i> of souls; for though at times an unseen +infinite Arm seems suddenly to press us upon some new heart, yet we +have always long <i>known</i> this heart, in the Gallery of the Saints of +our longing devotion and often taken the picture down, uncovered, and +adored it. It became impossible to Firmian (sitting in the evening in +his lonesome chair of anxiety and suspense) to keep all that love of +his waiting with any sort of patience for the morrow. The very +restraint which was upon him made his love wax warmer; and when his old +familiar fear—that he would die before the equinox came round—fell +upon him, it terrified him more than it was wont; but not the thought +of death. What shook him was the idea of Lenette’s difficulties, and +how she would ever find the money requisite for the performance of the +final trial, the anchor-proof<a name="div2Ref_57" href="#div2_57"><sup>[57]</sup></a> of his humanity. As it chanced, he +had plenty of money among his fingers at this very moment. He sprang up +and ran that very evening to the manager of the corpse lottery, so +that, at all events, his wife should be entitled to a capital of fifty +florins at his death, and be able to cover his body decently over with +a little earth. I don’t know the exact sum he paid; but I am quite +accustomed to embarrassments of this description, which novel-writers, +who can invent any sum they please in a case of this sort, have no idea +of, but which are exceedingly troublesome to a writer of actual +biography, who does not put down anything which he is not in a position +to substantiate by documentary evidence, and a reference to records. +</p> + +<p> +On the morning of the 11th of February, that is to say on the Saturday, +Firmian entered his room, feeling very tender-hearted (for every +illness and weakness softens our heart—loss of blood, for instance, +and trouble), and all the more so because he was looking forward to a +kindly, peaceful day. We love much more warmly when we are looking +forward to making somebody happy than we do half an hour after, when we +have done it. It was as windy this morning as if the gales were holding +tournament, or riding at the ring, or as if Æolus were shooting his +winds out of air-guns. Hence many people thought either that the +earthquake was beginning, or that a few people here and there had +hanged themselves for fear of it. Firmian met a pair of eyes in +Lenette’s face, from which, even at that early hour, there had fallen a +warm blood-rain of tears, on this first of her days. She had not in the +slightest degree guessed at his tenderness towards her, or at that +which he had in his mind. She had had no thought of anything of the +kind; her only idea had been, “Ah, me! since my poor father and mother +have been dead and gone, there is not a soul that ever remembers I have +a birthday.” Something or other was evidently pre-occupying her. She +looked once or twice, very inquiringly, into his eyes, and seemed to be +making up her mind to something; so he put off for a time the +outpouring of his full heart, and the unveiling of his twofold +birthday-present. At last she came up to him slowly, with the colour in +her face, tried in a troubled way to get his hand into hers, and said, +with downcast eyes, in which, as yet, there were no tears, “We will be +friends again to-day. If you <i>have</i> hurt me, and given me a little +pain, what I want is to forgive you from my heart. Do you the same to +me.” This address rent his warm breast in twain, and at first all +he could do was to be dumb, and clasp her in this silence to his +o’er-fraught heart, saying, after a time, “Forgive <i>thou</i> me only! for, +ah! I love thee far more than thou lovest me.” And here, at the thought +of bygone days, the heavy tear-drops rose from the depths of his laden +heart, and flowed, silent and slow, as the deep streams flow. She gazed +at him much astonished, saying, “We are going to be friends, then, are +we, to-day? and it is my birthday. But, ah, me! it is a sad, sad +birthday, too.” It was only at this point that he remembered his +birthday-present. He ran and brought it that is to say, the cushion, +the calico-dress, and the news that Stiefel was coming in the +evening. At this she began to shed tears, and said, “Ah! did you +really do all this yesterday? And you remembered that this was my +birthday? Oh! it was so kind of you, and I do so thank you for it; +particularly—particularly—for the delightful—cushion. I never +thought you would remember anything about my wretched birthday at all!” +His manly, beautiful soul, which kept no watch upon its enthusiasm (as +women’s do), told her everything, including the fact that he had joined +the corpse-lottery the day before, so that she might be able to put him +under ground at less expense. Her emotion became as strong and as +visible as his own. “No, no,” she cried at length, “God will preserve +you; but, then, there’s <i>this</i> terrible day; who knows if we shall ever +see another morning. Tell me, what does Mr. Stiefel think about the +earthquake?” “Don’t distress yourself on that score,” said Firmian; “he +says there won’t be anything of the kind.” +</p> + +<p> +Reluctantly he let her away from his glowing heart. Until he went out +into the free air (for writing was utterly impossible) he gazed +continually upon her bright, shining face, whence all the clouds were +quite cleared away. He practised upon himself an old trick he had +(which <i>I</i> have learnt from him); when he wished to love some dear +person very dearly, and forgive him everything, he looked long on his +face. For we (that’s to say he and I) see in a human face, when it is +old, the finger-board, the counting board, of all the bitter pains and +sorrows which have passed so rudely over it; and when it is young, it +is like a bed of flowers on the slope of a volcano, whose next eruption +will split it into shivers. Either the future or the past is written on +every face—making us gentle and tender, if not sad. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian would have been delighted to have held his new-found, restored +Lenette to his heart all the day long; at all events till evening came; +but her house-work and other occupations were so many bars’ rest in +this music, and her lachrymal ducts were sources of appetite, as well +as of tears. And she had not the courage to question him concerning the +metallic source of his gold-bearing stream, upon whose gentle waves she +was floating now. But her husband gladly divulged the secret of the +sale of his watch. The actual estate of matrimony was to-day to him +what the pre-nuptial period is always—a <i>cymbale d’amour</i>—having a +sounding-board at each of its faces which doubles, not the strings of +the instrument, but the tone of those it has. The entire day was like a +piece cut out of the full moon, unclouded by the slightest haze, or +rather out of the second world, into which the people of the moon +themselves proceed. Lenette, in her morning glow, was like the +(so-called) Moss of Violet Stone—the Iolite—which gives out the +perfume of a miniature-bed of violets, if you but rub it till it gets a +little warm. +</p> + +<p> +At evening finally appeared the Rath, all a-shake with agitation. He +looked just the least bit haughty, but when he tried to wish Lenette +many happy returns of the day, he could not do it for tears, which were +in his throat quite as much as in his eyes. His embarrassment served to +conceal hers; but <i>at length</i> the opaque mist cleared away from among +them, and they were able to look at one another. And then they were +very happy; Firmian forced himself to be so; the other two required no +constraining. +</p> + +<p> +The heavy storm-clouds, then, ceased for a time to hang and sweep so +low, as they had been doing of late, over their comforted, softened +hearts. The boding comet of the future was shorn of its sword, and went +sweeping on, far brighter and whiter, into the blue expanse of heaven, +passing athwart more brilliant constellations. And there came into +their evening a brief letter from Leibgeber, of which the joy-bringing +lines bedeck and adorn our hero’s evening, as well as our next chapter. +</p> + +<p> +Thus did the quick, transient, quivering <i>Flower-pieces</i> of Fantasy +mature in the brains of our triple alliance (as in the reader’s own) +into actual and living flowers of joy—as the fever-patient takes the +flowers patterned upon his waving bed-curtain to be real and tangible +forms. In truth, this winter night, like one of summer, would hardly +quite cool down and die out on their horizon, and when they parted at +midnight they said, “We have all had a very happy time.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch11"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<p class="center">LEIBGEBER’S DISQUISITION ON FAME—FIRMIAN’S “EVENING PAPER.” +</p> + +<p> +In my last chapter I practised a deception on the reader out of pure +goodwill towards him; however, I must let him remain undeceived until +he has read the following letter of Leibgeber’s:— +</p> + +<p class="right">“Vaduz February 2, 1786. +</p> + +<p class="noindent">“<span class="sc">My Firmian Stanislaus</span>, +</p> + +<p> +“In May I shall be in Bayreuth, and you must be there too. I have +nothing else of any consequence to write to you now—however, this is +quite important enough, namely, that I <i>order</i> you to arrive in +Bayreuth upon the first day of the month of gladness, because I have +something of the most extraordinarily mad and important kind in my head +concerning you, and that as sure as there is a heaven above us. My joy +and your happiness depend on your making this journey. I would reveal +the whole mystery to you in this letter if I were certain that it would +fall into no hands but your own. Come! You might travel in company with +a certain Kuhschnappler, of the name of Rosa, who is coming to Bayreuth +to fetch his bride home. But if (which God forbid) this Kuhschnappler +be that Meyern, of whom you have written to me, and if the said +goldfish is about to come swimming here to freeze (rather than to warm) +his pretty bride with his dry, wizzened arms (as in Spain they put +serpents, something like him, round bottles to cool them), I shall take +care, as soon as I get to Bayreuth to give her a very distinct idea of +him, and shall maintain that he’s ten thousand times better than the +Heresiarch Bellarmin, who committed adultery a great deal oftener +during his career—two thousand two hundred and thirty-six times, +to wit. I have the most anxious and heartfelt longing to behold +the Heimlicher von Blaise; were he but a little nearer at hand I +should—(seeing that there’s always something sticking in that throat +of his which he has some difficulty in getting down, such as an +inheritance, or somebody else’s house and land),—I say, I should give +him a good hard thwack every now and then in the small of his back (by +way of a cure) and await the outcome—I mean, of the mouthful. I myself +have been limping about the world in all directions, with my silhouette +scissors, and am now taking a little rest in Vaduz at a studious, +bibliothecarian Count’s, who really deserves that I should like him ten +times better than I do. But, you see, my fondness for <i>you</i> is fully as +much as my heart can hold; and (to speak in general terms) the human +race, and this green cheese of a world which it keeps on gnawing at, +seem to me more and more rotten and stinking every day. I <i>must</i> say to +you, ‘<i>Fame</i> may go to the devil!’ I think I shall decidedly dip down, +disappear, and get out of the way altogether, almost immediately, run +right into the thick of the crowd, and come to the surface every week +under a new name, so that the fools shan’t know who I am. Ah! there +were a few years, once on a time, when I really <i>did</i> wish to be +something—if not a great author, at least a ninth elector—to be +mitred, at any rate, if not belaurelled—if not (now and then) to be a +pro-rector, certainly (and very often) to be a dean. At that period of +my life I should have been exceedingly delighted had I suffered the +most atrocious tortures from gallstones, because I should have been +able to erect (with those eliminated from my system) an altar or temple +in my own honour, higher than the pyramid mentioned by Ruysh in his +‘Cabinet of Natural Science’ as having been constructed of the +forty-two gallstones of a certain noble lady. Siebenkæs, in those days +I could have gotten me a beard of wasps (as Wildau used to have one of +bees)—a stinging beard of wasps, for nothing else but to become famous +thereby. ‘I quite admit’ (said I, at the period in question) ‘that it +is not accorded to every son of earth (neither should he expect it), as +it was to Saint Romuald (as Bembo mentions in his life of him), that a +city shall beat him to death, merely to be enabled to filch his holy +body by way of a relic; but he <i>may</i>, I think, without being unduly +conceited, entertain a desire that a few hairs, if not of his fur-coat +(as of Voltaire’s, in Paris), yet, at all events, of his head, may have +the good luck to be plucked out as a souvenir by people who have a +certain opinion of him. (Here I chiefly allude to the reviewers.)’ +</p> + +<p> +“At the time in question I thought as above set forth, but <i>now</i> my +views are far more enlightened. Fame is a thing altogether unworthy of +fame. I was once sitting, on a cold, wet evening, on a boundary-stone, +considering myself carefully, and I said, ‘Now, <i>is</i> there really +anything in the wide world that can be made of you? What is it? Have +<i>you</i> any chance of becoming (like the deceased Cornelius Agrippa) +Secretary of State for War to the Emperor Maximilian, and +Historiographer to the Emperor Charles the Fifth? Will YOU ever hoist +yourself up to the position of Syndic and Advocate of the city of Metz, +Physician in Ordinary to the Duchess of Anjou, and Professor of +Theology in Pavia? Do you find that the Cardinal of Lorraine is as +anxious to stand godfather to your son as he was to Agrippa’s? And +would it not be ludicrous if <i>you</i> were to give out (and give yourself +airs about it) that a Margrave in Italy, and the King of England, the +Chancellor Mercurius Galinaria, and Margarita (a Princess of Austria), +had all wished to have you in their service in the same year? Wouldn’t +it be ludicrous, and a lie into the bargain, to say nothing of the +utter impossibility of the thing, seeing that all these people exploded +into the sleeping-powder of death so many years before <i>you</i> flashed up +in the shape of the priming and detonating powder of life! In what +well-known work (let me ask you) does Paul Jovius style <i>you</i> a +<i>portentosum ingenium</i>? What author reckons you among the <i>clarissima +sui sæculi lumina</i>? If it had been the case that <i>you</i> stood in +extraordinary credit with four cardinals and five bishops—with +Erasmus, Melancthon, and Capellanus—wouldn’t Schröckh and Schmidt have +mentioned it, <i>en passant</i>, in their “History of the Reformation”? Even +supposing that I were actually reposing side by side with Cornelius +Agrippa under his great grove of shrubbery of laurels, the same lot +would be mine and his; we should both rot away in obscurity beneath the +thicket, and it would be centuries before anybody came to lift the +branches and take a look at us.’ +</p> + +<p> +“It would do me no more good were I to go about the matter more +knowingly, and have myself belauded in the ‘Universal German Library.’ +I might stand for many a long year, with my wreath of bays round my hat +in that chill pocket-Pantheon, in my niche amongst the great <i>literati</i> +lying and sitting round me on their beds of state—we might all (I say) +wait begarlanded there, all alone together in that Temple of Fame of +ours for many a long year before a single soul came and opened the +door, and looked in at us, or entered and knelt down before me; and our +triumphal car would be nothing but a wheelbarrow, on which our temple, +with all its riches, should be whirled occasionally to a public +auction. Yet I might, perhaps, soar above all that, and make myself +immortal, could I but indulge a demi-hope that my immortality would +reach the ears of any but those who are themselves as yet in this +mortal life. But can it afford me the smallest gratification when I am +compelled to perceive that it is exactly to all the most renowned and +celebrated of people, over whose faces the laurel is growing, year by +year, in their coffins (as the rosemary does over humbler dead), that I +can never be anything but an unexplored Africa—particularly to Shem, +Ham, and Japhet; to Absalom and his father; to both the Catos, the two +Anthonys, Nebuchadnezzar, the Seventy Interpreters, and their wives; to +the seven wise men of Greece; even to mere fools, such as Taubmann and +Eulenspiegel? When a Henry IV., and the four Evangelists, and Bayle +(who knows all the rest of the learned), and the charming Ninon (who +knows them better still), and Job, the bearer of sorrows—or, at all +events, the author of Job—don’t know that there ever was such a thing +as a Leibgeber on the face of the earth: when I am, and must ever +remain, to a whole bye-gone world (<i>i. e</i>., six thousand years replete +with great and grand men and nations), a mathematical point, an +invisible eclipse, a wretched <i>je ne sais quoi</i>, I really do not see +how posterity (in which there mayn’t be so very much after all), or the +next six thousand years, can do anything to speak of by way of +compensation. +</p> + +<p> +“Besides, I cannot tell what description of glorious heavenly +hosts and archangels there are upon other world-balls, and on the +little spheres in the milky way—that paternoster bead-chaplet of +world-balls—seraphs, compared to whom I cannot be looked upon as +anything but a sheep. We souls do, it is true, progress to a +considerable extent, and ascend to loftier levels. Even here upon earth +the oyster-soul develops into a frog-soul, the frog-soul into a +cod-fish, the cod-fish into a goose, thence to a sheep, an ass—aye, or +even an ape—and ultimately into a Bush Hottentot (for we can suppose +nothing higher than that). But a peripatetic climax of this kind begins +to cease inflating one with pride when the following reflection occurs +to one. Among the various individuals which compose a species of +animals (among whom there <i>must</i> certainly occur geniuses, good, sound, +common-sense intelligences, and absolute blockheads), we find that we +remark and take notice only of the latter, or, at most, of the +extremes. No species of animals (considered collectively) is close +enough to our retina to admit of our perceiving its delicate middle +tints and gradations: and thus must it be with <i>us</i> when some spirit, +sitting in heaven, looks at us in the mass. He is so far away, that he +will find some trouble (very vain trouble, too) in drawing a proper +distinction between Kant, and his shaving looking-glasses—the +Kantists; between Goëthe and his imitators; and will see little or no +difference between members of faculty and dunces, professors’ +lecture-rooms and lunatic asylums; for little steps are wholly lost to +the sight of one who is standing on the uppermost of them. +</p> + +<p> +“Now this deprives a thinker of all pleasure and courage; and, +Siebenkæs, hang me if I ever sit down and grow one bit famous, or give +myself the trouble either to build up or to pull down any learned or +ingenious system whatever, or write anything at all of greater length +than a letter. +</p> + +<p class="right" style="margin-right:15%">“Thy (not my) Self, +</p> + +<p class="right">“L. +</p> + +<p> +“P.S. I wish it would please God to grant me a second life after this, +that I might have the opportunity of dealing with a few <i>realities</i> in +the next world; for this one is really altogether too hollow and +stupid; a wretched Nürnberg toy; nothing but the falling froth of a +life; a jump through the hoop of eternity; a rotten, dusty, apple of +Sodom, which, splutter as much as I will, I can’t get out of my mouth. +Oh!—” +</p> + +<p> +To readers who think the above piece of humour not sufficiently +serious, I shall prove, in another place, that it is <i>too</i> serious, and +that it is only an <i>oppressed</i> heart which can jest in this fashion; +that it is only an eye which is in much too feverish a condition—with +the fireworks of life darting round it like the flying fire-flashes +which precede <i>amaurosis</i>—which is capable of seeing and picturing +such fever-forms. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian understood it all, at the time in question at all events. But I +must go back to the 11th of February, in order to half-deprive the +reader of his sympathising enjoyment of the re-union of the trefoil of +friends which then took place. Lenette’s trembling petition that her +husband would pardon her, was but the forced hot-bed fruit of Zichen’s +earth-shaking prophecy. She thought that she herself, and the ground +she stood upon, were about to be let down; and it was at the near +approach of death (whom she thought she already saw wagging his tiger’s +tail) that she held out to her husband a hand of Christian peace. For +(and <i>to</i>) that beautiful soul of his (<i>dis</i>embodied) hers wept tears +of love and of rapture. But very probably she, to some extent, confused +her happiness with her love—satisfaction with fidelity; and (it +may be suspected) the eagerness with which she was looking forward +to enwrapping the Schulrath, that very evening, in a warm and +tender—<i>gaze</i>, found outward expression in the shape of an unusual +degree of affection for her husband. It is here most essential that I +should communicate to all and sundry persons one of the most valuable +of all my maxims; in dealings with even the very best woman in the +world, it is of the utmost importance that we should make excessively +certain, and discriminate with the utmost accuracy, what it is which +she really wants (at the time being), and particularly <i>whom</i>—(this is +not always the person who is thus discriminating). There is in the +female heart such a rapid coming and going, and fluctuation, of +emotions of every kind; such an effusion of many-tinted bubbles which +reflect everything, but most particularly whatever chances to be +nearest, that a woman, under the influence of emotion, shall, while she +sheds a tear for <i>you</i> out of her left eye, go on thinking, and drop +another for your predecessor or successor (as the case may be) out of +her right. Also a feeling of tenderness for a rival falls half to a +husband’s share; and a woman, even the most loyally faithful, weeps +more at what she thinks than at what she hears. +</p> + +<p> +’Tis very stupid that so many masculine persons among us are stupid +precisely on this point; that a woman thinking (as she does) more of +other people’s feelings than of her own, is, in this matter, neither +the deceiver nor the deceived; what she is is the deception itself—the +optical deception and the acoustic. +</p> + +<p> +But Firmians seldom make well-digested reflections of this sort +concerning elevenths of February until the twelfth. Wendeline was in +love with the Schulrath; that was the fact of the matter. Like all +women of any sense (in Kuhschnappel), she had believed in the +superintendent-general, and in the kick he had administered to the +earth, until Peltzstiefel, in the evening, unhesitatingly pronounced +the idea of such a thing to be simply <i>impious</i>, when she abandoned the +prophetic superintendent and gave in her adhesion to the incredulous +worldling, Firmian. We all know that he had every bit as much of the +masculine failing of overdoing consistency as she had of the feminine +one of carrying inconsistency too far. It was foolish, therefore, in +him to think that he was going to regain, by means of one grand +effusion of the heart, an affection embittered by so many small +effusions of gall. The grandest benefits, the loftiest manly +enthusiasm, are incapable of uprooting, all in an instant, a feeling of +ill-will which has rooted itself all over a person’s heart with a +thousand little spreading fibres. The affection which we have deprived +ourselves of by means of a long-continued, gradual process of chilling, +is only to be regained by an equally lengthy process of warming. +</p> + +<p> +In a word, it became evident in the course of a day or two that things +were just as they had been three weeks before. Lenette’s love had +flourished and grown to such an extent, by reason of Stiefel’s absence, +that there was not room for it any longer under its bell-glass—it was +shooting out leaves beyond the edge of it into the open-air. The <i>Aqua +Toffana</i> of jealousy at last permeated every vessel in Firmian’s body, +flowed into his heart, and gnawed it slowly in pieces. He was but the +tree on which Lenette had inscribed her love for another, and was +withering by reason of the incisions. He <i>had so</i> hoped that the +Schulrath, recalled to them on Lenette’s birthday, would have healed +all wounds, however deep; or at all events cicatrized them over: +whereas, what he really had done was to open them all wider than +ever—all unconscious as he was of it. Ah! what pain this was to the +wretched husband! He grew poorer and weaker, and more miserable—both +outwardly and inwardly—as the days went by, and gave up all hope of +ever seeing the First of May and Bayreuth. February, March, and April +passed over head—all heavy, dripping clouds, without a single break of +blue sky or blink of evening-red. +</p> + +<p> +On the 1st of April he lost his law-suit for the second time; and on +the 13th (Maunday Thursday) he finished, for ever, his ‘Evening Paper’ +(this was the name he gave to his diary, because he wrote it of an +evening), meaning to consign <i>that</i>, along with his ‘Selections from +the Devil’s Papers’ (as far as they were completed) into Leibgeber’s +most faithful hands (at Bayreuth), in place of his body, so soon to +vanish and be resolved into its elements. For, he thought, those hands +would fainer clasp his soul (which was in the papers) than his poor +meagre body—of which, <i>du reste</i>, Liebgeber always possessed a second +unaltered edition (a perfect <i>facsimile</i> copy, so to speak) at all +times at hand, in the shape of his own. I have no hesitation in here +quoting, without emendation, the whole of this concluding page of the +‘Evening Paper’—Firmian’s ‘Swan Song,’ which—which went off by the +following post. +</p> + +<p> +“Yesterday, my law-suit was wrecked on the shoal of the Court of Appeal +of the second instance. The defendant’s counsel, and the Court, brought +to bear upon me an old Statute, of force in Kuhschnappel as well as in +Bayreuth, which enacts that a deposition made before a notary is not +valid—depositions having to be made before the Court. These two +hearings of my case render the uphill path to the third a little +easier. For my poor Lenette’s sake I have appealed to the Lower House, +my kind Stiefel advancing me the necessary cash. Truly, in applying to +the oracles of Justice we have to fast and mortify, just as much as was +<i>de rigueur</i> in consulting the heathen oracles of old. I have reason to +hope that I shall be able to effect my escape from the clutches of the +knaves of the State;<a name="div2Ref_58" href="#div2_58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> or (shall I say), from these game-keepers and +their <i>couteaux de chasse</i>, and hunting-spears or swords of Themis. I +think I shall get through their hunting-tackle of legal proceedings, +the toils, nets, and gins of their Acts of Parliament—not by my purse +(which is fallen away to the thickness of an insect’s feeler, and could +be drawn, like a leather <i>queue</i>, through the smallest mesh in any of +their legal nets)—but with my body, which, as it approaches the +topmost of their nets will be turned into dust of death, and will then +fly free through and over every trap they can set. +</p> + +<p> +“I desire to lift my hand away from this, my evening paper, to-night +for the last time, ere it becomes an absolute martyrology. If one could +give away his life as a gift, I should be very happy to give mine to +any dying person who would care to accept it. At the same time, let +nobody suppose that because there chances to be a total eclipse of the +sun above my head, I think, for a moment, that there must be one in +America as well; or that I imagine the Gold Coast must be snowed up for +the winter because a snowflake or two happen to be falling in front of +my own nose. Life is warm and beautiful; even mine was so once. If it +must be that I am to melt away, even before these snowflakes, I beg of +my heirs, and of all Christian people, that they will not publish any +part of my selection from the ‘Devil’s Papers,’ except that which I +have copied out fair, which extends as far as the ‘Satire upon Women’ +(inclusively). And as regards this diary of mine, in which one or two +satirical fancies crop out here and there, I beg, also, that not a +single one of these may be put into print. +</p> + +<p> +“Should any curious inquirer into the history of this +day-and-night-book of mine be anxious to discover what the heavy +weights, the nests, the clothes hung out to dry upon my branches, +really consisted of, that they should so bend my top shoot and my +branches down (and all the more curious to know it, inasmuch as I have +written humorous satires)—(though, indeed, my sole object has been to +nourish and support myself by help of these satire prickles of mine, +absorbent vessels, to me, like those of the torch-thistle), I beg to +inform him that he seeks to know more than I know myself, and more than +I mean to tell. For man and the horseradish are most biting when +grated; and the satirist is sadder than the jester, for the same reason +that the Urang-Utang is more melancholy than the ape, namely, because +he is nobler. If this paper does really reach your hands, my Henry, my +beloved, and you wish to hear somewhat concerning the hail which has +kept falling deeper and deeper upon my young seed-crop—count not the +melted hailstones, but the broken stalks. I have nothing left to give +me joy, save your affection—everything else is battered down into +ruin. Since, for more reasons than one,<a name="div2Ref_59" href="#div2_59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> it is most unlikely that I +shall ever come to you at Bayreuth, let us part, on this page, like +spirits, giving each other hands of air. I detest the sentimental, but +Fate has wellnigh grafted it on to me at last, in spite of myself, and +I swallow great spoonsful of that satiric Glauber’s salt, which is +generally so good a remedy for it—as sheep, who have caught the rot +from feeding in damp meadows, are cured by licking salt. I say I +swallow great spoonsful, about the size of my prizes at the +bird-shooting, without the least perceptible effect. But, on the whole, +it matters little. Fate, unlike our Sheriffs’ Courts, does not wait +until we are well before she inflicts her sentence. My giddiness and +other premonitory symptoms of apoplexy, give me to understand, with +sufficient clearness, that I shall soon be subjected to a good Galenian +blood-letting,<a name="div2Ref_60" href="#div2_60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> by way of remedy for the nose-bleedings of this +life. I cannot say that I am particularly glad of it, or anxious for +it. On the contrary, I am annoyed with people who demand that Fate +shall at once unswaddle them (for we are swaddled in our bodies, the +nerves and arteries being the swaddling-bands)—as a mother does her +infant just because it cries, and has a little pain in its stomach. I +should be glad to remain swaddled for a while to come among the rest of +the ‘Children of the Rope,’<a name="div2Ref_61" href="#div2_61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> particularly as I cannot but fear that, +in the next world, I shall be able to make little or no use of my +satirical humour. However, I shall have to go. But when that comes to +pass, I should like to ask you, Henry, to come some day to this town, +and make them uncover your friend’s quiet face, which will scarce +manage to put on the Hippocratic mien again. Then, my Henry, when you +gaze long upon the grey, spotty, new moon-face there, and think that +very little sunshine ever fell thereon—no sunshine of love, of fame, +or fortune—you will not be able to look up to heaven, and cry out to +God, ‘And now, at last, after all his sorrows and troubles, Thou, O +God, hast annihilated him altogether; when he stretched his arms, in +death, towards Thee, and that world of thine, Thou hast broken him in +sunder as he lies there—poor soul!’ No, Henry, when I die, <i>you</i> will +be compelled to believe in Immortality. +</p> + +<p> +“Now that I have finished this ‘Evening Paper’ of mine, I am going to +put out the light, for the full moon is shedding broad, imperial sheets +of brightness into the room. Then, as there is no one else awake in the +house, I will sit down in the twilight stillness, and, while I gaze at +the moon’s white magic amid the black magic of night, and listen to +great flocks of birds of passage as they come flying hither from warmer +lands through the blue, clear moonlight—while I am passing away into a +sister country—I will stretch my feelers out from my snail’s shell +once more before the last frost closes it up for ever. Henry, I want to +picture to myself to-night, clearly and brightly, all that is now over +and past; the May of our friendship—every evening when we were too +much moved by emotion and could not but fall into each other’s arms—my +hopes, so old and grey now that I hardly know them to be mine—five +old, but bright and happy, springs which I still remember—my dead +mother, who, when she was dying, gave me a lemon, which she thought +would be put into her coffin, and said, ‘Ah, I wish it were going into +my bridal garland.’ And I will picture to myself, also, that moment, +now so near, of my <i>own</i> death, when thy image will rise before the +broken sight of my soul for the last time—when I shall part from thee, +and, with a dark, inward pang, which can no more bring a tear into my +cold and glazing eyes, sink away from thy shadowy form into the dark, +and from amid the thick and heavy clouds of death, call to thee with a +faint and hollow cry, ‘Henry, good-night! good-night! Ah, fare thee +well! for I can say no more.’” +</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="sc">End of the ‘Evening Paper</span>.’ +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch12"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">THE FLIGHT OUT OF EGYPT—THE GLORIES OF TRAVEL—THE +UNKNOWN—BAYREUTH—BAPTISM IN A STORM—NATHALIE AND THE +HERMITAGE—THE MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATION IN ALL THIS BOOK—AN +EVENING OF FRIENDSHIP. +</p> + +<p> +Once, in the Easter week, when Firmian came home from a half-hour’s +pleasure-trip full of forced marches, Lenette asked him why he had not +come back sooner, because the postman had been with a great, enormous +packet, and had said that the husband must sign the receipt for it +himself. In a small establishment like Siebenkæs’ an occurrence such as +this ranks among the world’s greatest events, or the principal +revolutions in its history. The moments of waiting lay on their souls +like cupping-glasses and drawing plasters. At length the postman, in +his yellow uniform, put an end to the bitter-sweet hemp beating of +their arteries. Firmian acknowledged the receipt of fifty dollars, +while Lenette asked the postman who had sent them, and where they came +from. The letter commenced thus:— +</p> + +<p class="noindent">“My dear Siebenkæs, +</p> + +<p> +“I have received your ‘Evening Paper’ and ‘Devil’s Selections’ all +safely. The rest by word of mouth. +</p> + +<p class="center">“<i>Postscript</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“But listen! If the future course of my waltz of life is a matter of +the slightest interest to you—if you care in the least degree about my +happiness, my plans, or ideas—if it is anything to you but a matter of +the supremest indifference that I frank you as far as Bayreuth, +providing you with board, lodging, and travelling expenses all on +account of a project whose yarn the spinning-mills of the future must +either manufacture into gin-snares and gallows-ropes (for my life), or +else into rope-ladders and best bower anchor-cables—if this, and other +matters more momentous still, have the smallest power over you, +Firmian, for heaven’s sake, on with a pair of boots and start!” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“And, by thy holy friendship!” said Siebenkæs, “I will on with a pair, +though the bolt of apoplexy should flash out of the blue sky of Swabia, +and strike me down beneath a cherry-tree in full blossom. Nothing shall +prevent me now!” +</p> + +<p> +He kept his word, for in six days from thence we find him, at eleven +o’clock at night, ready for his journey, with clean linen on his back, +and in his pockets—with a hat-cover on his head (secretly freighted +and stuffed with an old soft hat)—his newest boots (the antediluvian +pair s relieved from duty, being left behind in garrison)—and a +tower-clock, borrowed from Peltzstiefel, in his pocket—and fresh +bathed, shaven, and kempt, standing by his wife and friend—both of +whom kept their eyes fixed, with a gladsome, courteous watchfulness +upon the departing traveller only, and did not, for the time being, +look at all at one another. He took his leave of the pair while it was +still night, being minded to pass the rest of it in his arm chair (of +many sorrows), and be off about three o’clock, while Lenette should +still be snoring. He committed to the Schulrath the office of +treasurer-in-chief of the widow’s fund to his grass-widow, and the +managership, or, at least, the “leading business,” of his miniature +Covent Garden full of Gay’s Beggar’s Operas, the theatrical journal +whereof I am here writing for the edification of a full half of the +world. “Lenette,” he said, “when you want any counsel, apply to the +counsellor here; he is going to do me the favour to come and see you +very often indeed.” Peltzstiefel made the most solemn promises to come +every day. Lenette did not go down stairs to the door with the +Schulrath when he went away, as she usually did, but remained above, +and drawing her hand out of her replenished money-bag (the starved +stomachic coats of which had hitherto been rubbing together), snapped +it to. It is not of sufficient importance to be recorded that Siebenkæs +asked her to put out the light, and go to her bed, and that he gave her +charming face his long parting kiss, and said good night, and took the +tender farewell, almost within the Eden-gate of the land of dreams with +that redoublement of fondness with which we take our leave of those we +love, and greet them when we come back to them again. +</p> + +<p> +The watchman’s last call at length drew him from his sleeping chair out +into the starlight, breezy morning; but, first, he crept once more into +the bed-room to the rose-maiden dreaming there, warm and happy, pulled +the window to (for there was a cool air from it falling upon her +unprotected breast), and would not suffer his lips to touch her in an +awakening kiss. He gazed at her by the light of the stars and early +blush of dawn, till he turned his eyes away (fast growing dim) at the +thought, “perhaps I may never see her again.” +</p> + +<p> +As he passed through the sitting-room, her distaff seemed to look at +him as if it were a thing of life; it was wrapped in broad bands of +coloured paper (which she had put on it because she had not got silk); +and there was her spinning-wheel, too, which she used to work at in the +dark mornings and evenings when there was not light enough for sewing. +As he pictured her to himself working industriously at them while he +was away, every wish of his heart cried out, “Ah, poor darling! may all +go well with her, always, whether I ever come back to her or not.” +</p> + +<p> +This thought of the <i>last time</i> grew more vivid still when he was out +in the open air, and felt a slight giddiness produced, in the physical +part of his head, by agitation and broken sleep, as well as natural +regret at the sight of his home receding from view, and the town +growing dimmer, and the foreground changing into background, and the +disappearance of all the paths and heights on which he had so often +walked a little life into his benumbed heart, frozen by the past +winter. The little leaf whereon, like a leaf roller, or miner-worm, he +had been crawling and feeding, was falling now to earth behind him, a +skeleton leaf. +</p> + +<p> +But the first spot of foreign, unfamiliar soil, as yet unmarked by any +“Station of his Passion,” drew, like a serpent-stone, an acrid drop or +two of sorrow-poison out of his heart. +</p> + +<p> +And now the solar flames shot higher and higher up upon the enkindled +morning clouds, till, at length, hundreds of suns rose in an instant in +the sky, in the streams and pools, and in the dew-cups of the flowers, +while thousands of varied colours went flowing athwart the face of +earth, and one bright whiteness broke from the sky. +</p> + +<p> +Fate plucked away most of the yellow, faded leaves from Firmian’s soul, +as gardeners remove those of plants in spring. His giddiness diminished +rather than otherwise as he went on; the walking did it good. As the +sun rose in heaven, another, a super-earthly sun, rose in his soul. In +every valley, in every grove, on every rising ground, he broke and cast +away a ring or two of the chrysalis-case of wintry life and trouble +(which had been clinging so tightly to him), and unfolded his moist +upper and nether wings, and let the breeze of May waft him away, on +four outspread pinions, up into the bright air among the butterflies, +but higher than they, and over loftier flowers. +</p> + +<p> +And then with what a burst of power the life within him began, under +this new impetus, to boil and seethe, as, issuing from a diamond-mine +of a valley all shade and dewdrops, he walked a pace or two up through +the heaven-gate of the spring. It was as if some great earthquake had +upheaved a new-created flowery plain, all dripping from the ocean, +stretching further than the eye could reach, all rich in youthful +powers and impulses. The fire of earth glowed beneath the roots of this +great hanging garden, and the fire of heaven flamed above it burning +the colours into the trees and flowers. Between the white mountains, as +between porcelain towers, stood the bright tinted, flowery slopes like +thrones for the fruit goddesses. And all over the face of this great +camp of gladness, the cups of the flowers and the heavy dewdrops were +pitched, like peopled tents. The earth teemed with young broods, and +sprouting grasses, and countless little hearts; and heart after +heart, life after life, burst forth into being from out the warm +brooding-cells of Mother Nature—burst forth with wings, or silken +threads, or delicate feelers—and hummed, and sucked, and smacked its +lips and sang. And for every one of these countless honeysucking trunks +a cup of gladness had long since been filled and ready. +</p> + +<p> +In this great market-place of this living city of the sun, so full of +glory and sounding life, the pet child of the infinite Mother stood +solitary—gazing, with bright and happy eyes, delighted, around him +into all its innumerable streets. But his eternal Mother wore her veil +of immeasurable immensity, and it was only the warmth which pierced to +his heart which told him that he was lying upon her breast. Firmian +reposed from this two hours’ intoxication of heart in a peasant’s hut. +The foaming spirit of a cup of joy like this went quicker to the heart +of a sick man such as he than to those of the commoner run of +sufferers. +</p> + +<p> +When he went out again the glory had sobered down into brightness, and +his enthusiasm into simple happiness. Every red ladybird fluttering on +its way, every red church-roof, and every sparkling stream as it +glittered and glistened with dancing stars, shed joyous lights and +brilliant colours upon his soul. When he heard the cries of the +charcoal burners in the wood, the resounding cracking of whips, and the +crash of falling trees, and then, when coming out into the open, he saw +the white châteaux and roads standing out against the dark-green +background like constellations and milky ways, and above the shining +cloud specks in the deep blue sky; while lights flashed and darted +everywhere, now down from trees, now up from streams, now athwart saws +in the distance—there was no such thing as a foggy corner left in his +soul, nor a single spot in it all unpenetrated by the spring sunshine: +the moss of gnawing, corroding care, which can grow only in damp shade, +fell from his bread-trees and trees of liberty out here in the glad, +free air, and his soul could not but join in the great chorus of flying +and humming creatures which was rising all round him, singing, “Life is +beautiful, and youth is lovelier still; but spring is loveliest of +all.” +</p> + +<p> +The bygone winter lay behind him like the dark, frozen South Pole; the +royal burgh of Kuhschnappel like some deep, dreary school-dungeon with +dripping walls. The only spot in it over which broad, gladsome sunbeams +were intertwining was his own home, and he pictured to himself Lenette +in that home as commander-in-chief, free to talk, cook, and wash at her +own sweet will, and with her head (and hands, too) full all day long of +the delight that was coming in the evening. He was glad from the very +depths of his heart that, in that little egg-shell of hers, that +sulphur-hut and chartreuse, she should enjoy the glory and brightness +which that angel Peltzstiefel would bring with him into her St. Peter’s +prison. “Ah! in God’s name,” thought he, “may she be as happy as I +am—nay, and happier, too, if that be possible.” +</p> + +<p> +The more villages he came to, with their troupes of strolling players +(of inhabitants), the more did life in general seem to assume a +theatrical guise—his past troubles were transformed into leading +parts in the drama, or Aristotelian problems—his clothes into stage +costumes—his new boots became <i>cothurna</i>—and his purse a theatre +treasury—while a delicious stage-recognition was awaiting him in the +arms of his beloved Henry. +</p> + +<p> +About half-past three in the afternoon, in a Swabian village, whose +name he did not inquire, his whole soul melted of a sudden to tears, so +that he was completely astonished at the unlooked-for and rapid +<i>attendrissement</i>. His surroundings at the time would have rather led +him to anticipate a contrary effect. He was standing by an old +thorn-tree, rather crooked, and dead at the top; the village women were +on the green washing their clothes, which glistened in the sunlight, +and throwing down chopped eggs and nettles to feed the downy, yellow +goslings; a gentleman’s gardener was clipping a hedge, while a herd-boy +was summoning his sheep (clipped already for <i>their</i> part) round the +thorn-tree, with his <i>cornemuse</i>. It was all so youthful, so pretty, so +Italian! The beautiful May had half (or wholly) unclad everything and +everyone—the sheep, the geese, the women, the shepherd-minstrel, the +hedger, and his hedge.... +</p> + +<p> +Why was he thus moved to tenderness in this gladsome and smiling scene? +Partly because he had been so happy all day, but chiefly by the +shepherd bassoonist calling his flock together with that stage +instrument of his beneath the thorn. Firmian had helped a shepherd of +this sort, with a crook and a reed-pipe, to drive his own father’s +sheep home hundreds of times when he was a boy; and the tones of the +<i>Ranz des Vaches</i> brought back in an instant his own rose-coloured +childhood—it arose from out its dew of the morning, its bowers of +budding blossoms and sleeping flowers, and stood before him in heavenly +guise, and smiled in all its own innocence dressed in its thousand +hopes, saying, “Behold me! see how lovely I am; we used to play +together, you and I; how much I used to give you!—grand kingdoms, +broad meadows, and gold, and a great, endless Paradise beyond the +hills. But it seems you have nothing left now. And how pale you are, +and worn! Come and play with me again!” +</p> + +<p> +Who is there amongst us to whom Music has not brought back his +childhood a thousand times? She comes and says, “Are not the rosebuds +blown yet which I gave you?” Yes, yes, they are blown; they were white +roses, though! +</p> + +<p> +The evening made his joy-flowers close, folding their petals together +above their nectaries; and an evening dew of melancholy fell ever +heavier and thicker upon his soul as he went on his way. Just before +sunset he came to a village; I am sorry to say I cannot remember +whether it was Honbart, or Houstein, or Jaxheim; but of this I am +pretty certain, that it was one of the three, because it was near the +River Jagst, and in Anspach, on the borders of Ellwangen. His +night-quarters lay smoking down in the valley before him. Before going +on into them he lay down on the hill-side beneath a tree, whose +branches were the cathedral chancel of a choir of singing creatures. +Not far from him gleamed the trembling tinsel of a piece of water, +glittering in the evening sun; and above him the golden leaves and the +white blossoms rustled like grasses waving over flowers. The cuckoo +(always her own sounding-board and multiplying echo) talked to him from +the tree-top in mournful tones of sorrow; the sun was gone; the shadows +were throwing thick veils of crape over the brightness of the day. He +asked himself, “<i>What</i> is my Lenette doing now? Of whom is she +thinking? Who is with her?” And here there fell about his heart, like a +band of ice, the thought, “Ah! but <i>I</i> have no loved one whose hand I +can clasp!” +</p> + +<p> +After drawing to himself a vivid picture of the tender, delicate, +beautiful, woman whom he had so often invoked, but never met—to whom +he would have given and sacrificed—oh! so gladly—so much! not only +his heart and his life, but his every wish, his every whim—he went +down the hill with streaming eyes, which he strove in vain to dry; but, +at all events, any kind womanly heart (among the readers of this tale) +which has loved in vain, or to its own detriment, will forgive him +these burning tears, knowing, from sad personal experience, how the +soul seems to journey on through a desolate wilderness, where the +deathly Samiel wind blows ceaselessly, while lifeless forms lie +scattered around, dashed to earth by the blast, their arms breaking +from their crumbling trunks when the living touches them in act to +clasp them to his own warm heart. But ye, in whose clasp so many a +heart has grown cold, chilled by inconstancy or by the frost of +death—ye should not mourn so bitterly as do those lonely souls who +have never <i>lost</i>, because they have never <i>found</i>; who yearn for that +immortal and eternal love of which even the mortal and transient reflex +has never been vouchsafed to bless them. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian carried with him into his night-quarters a tranquil, though a +tender, heart, which healed itself in dreams. When he looked up +from his slumbers, the constellations, set in his window as in a +picture-frame, twinkled lovingly before his bright and happy eyes, and +beamed upon him the astrological prophecy of a happy morrow. +</p> + +<p> +He fluttered, with the earliest lark, up out of the furrow of his bed, +with as many trills as he, and quite as much energy. That day, fatigue +plucking the bird-of-paradise wings from his fancy, he could not quite +get out of the territory of Anspach. The day after, he reached Bamberg, +leaving on the right hand Nürnberg—that and its <i>Pays Coutumiers</i> and +<i>Pays de Droit écrit</i>. His path led him from one paradise to another. +The plain seemed to be one great mosaic of gardens; the hills seemed to +crouch closer to the earth, as if to let men the more readily climb up +upon their backs and humps. The groves of deciduous trees were like +garlands, twined and placed to adorn Nature on some great festal day; +and the setting sun often glowed through the trellis-work of some leafy +balustrade on a hill-side, like a purple apple in some perforated +fruit-vase. In one valley one longed to take one’s mid-day sleep; in +another, one’s breakfast; in this stream, to see the moon reflected +when she stood in the zenith; to see her rise behind this group of +trees; to see the sun rise out of that green trellised bed of trees at +the <i>Streitberg</i>. +</p> + +<p> +When he arrived the next day at Streitberg, where all those delights +could be indulged in at once, he might easily have seen the top +of the spire of Bayreuth put on the blushing tints of the evening +Aurora—unless he was a much worse walker than his historian; however, +he did not care to do so. He said to himself, “I should be an ass were +I to go rushing, all dog-tired and dried up as I am, upon the first +hour of a delicious reunion and meeting of this sort; neither he +(Leibgeber) nor I would get a wink of sleep; and what should we have +time to talk about at this hour in the evening? No, no, better wait, +and get there the first thing in the morning, about six o’clock, and so +have the whole day before us for our millennium.” +</p> + +<p> +Accordingly he passed the night in Fantaisie, an artificial pleasure, +rose, and flower-valley, half a mile from Bayreuth. I find it a very +hard and difficult matter to reserve the erection of my paper model of +this Seifersdorf miniature valley (which I should so much like to +introduce at this point), until I find a roomier place for it than the +present; however, I can’t help it, and should I not find such a place, +there is sure to be ample space in the blank pages at the end of the +book. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian started, then, in company with a body of bats and beetles—the +advanced guard of a beautiful bright day—and bringing up the rear (so +to speak) of the people of Bayreuth, who had just finished their Sunday +and Feast of the Ascension (it was the 7th of May): and he walked so +late that the moon, in her first quarter, was casting deep, strong +shadows of the blossoms and branches upon the greensward. Thus late in +the evening, then, Firmian climbed a height from whence he could look +down, with tears of joy, to Bayreuth—where the beloved brother of his +soul was waiting for him and thinking of him—as it lay softly veiled +in the bridal night of spring, and broidered over with shining flakes +of Luna’s radiance. I can affirm in his name with a “Verily” that he +nearly did what <i>I should</i> have done myself; that is to say, <i>I</i>, with +a heart welling up in such a warm sort of manner as <i>his</i> was, and on a +night all so adorned and pranked out with gold and silver, should have +made but one bound into the Sun Hotel, and into my Leibgeber’s arms. +However, he went back again into his odour-breathing Capua (Fantaisie), +and there, in the brief intervening space of time between his return +and supper and evening prayer time, he met—beside a dried-up +water-basin or fish-pond, peopled by a race of deities transformed into +stone—he met with nothing less than an exceedingly charming adventure. +I proceed to give an account of it. +</p> + +<p> +Beside the wall which surrounded the little lake in question, there was +a lady standing; she was dressed all in black except her veil, which +was white; she had a bouquet of faded flowers in her hand, and was +turning it over with her fingers. She was looking towards the west, +that is to say, away from him, and seemed to be contemplating partly +the confused mass of stone <i>Suisseries</i>, and the coral-reef of +sea-horses, tritons, and so on, and partly a temple, in artificial +ruins, which was close by. As he passed slowly on he saw, by a side +glance, that she threw a flower, not so much <i>at</i> as <i>over</i> him, as if +this sign of exclamation were meant to rouse a pre-occupied person from +his <i>reverie</i>. He looked round a little, just to show that he was +really awake and observant, and went up to the glass-door of the +artificially-ruined temple, in order to linger a little longer in the +vicinity of this enigma. Inside the temple, facing him, there was a +mirrored pillar, which reflected all the foreground and middle distance +(including the fair unknown) in the green perspective of a long +background. Firmian saw, in the mirror, the lady throw her bouquet at +him bodily, and then roll an orange (which would not fly so far as the +flowers) towards his feet. He turned round with a smile. A soft voice +cried in an eager, hasty way, “Don’t you know me?” He said, “No;” and +ere he had added, more slowly, “I am a stranger,” the unknown Lady +Abbess had drawn near to him, and lifted the Moses veil rapidly from +her face, and asked, in a louder tone, “Don’t you, <i>now</i>?” And a female +head which might have been sawn from the shoulders of the Vatican +Apollo (only softened by some eight or ten feminine traits, and a +narrower brow) glowed upon him like some bust illumined by the flare of +a torch. But, on his repeating that he was a stranger, and when she +examined him more closely, and without her veil, and let her gauze +portcullis down again (which movements took altogether about as long as +one beat of the pendulum of an astronomical clock), she turned away +saying, “I beg your pardon,” in a tone which expressed more womanly +annoyance than embarrassment. +</p> + +<p> +A very little thing would have set him off to follow her in a +mechanical sort of manner. He immediately set about adorning all +Fantaisie with plaster-casts of her head (instead of the stone +goddesses)—of her head, which had but three pleonasms in the face of +it—too much colour in the cheeks, too much curve in the nose, and too +much wild fire (or rather material for kindling it) in the eyes. “That +is the sort of head,” he thought, “which would be well in its place in +an opera-box, beside the sparkling one of some royal bride (ay, and +hold its own there), and might contain all the wisdom it might +deprive—other people of.” +</p> + +<p> +One carries a magic adventure such as this into one’s dreams with one, +for it is like a dream itself. The month of May now stuck in little +flower-sticks to all Firmian’s drooping, trembling, joy-flowers (as she +had done to Nature’s), and lightly bound them to them. Ah! with what +brightness do even little joys beam upon the soul when it stands on +some spot all darkened by clouds of sorrow—as stars shine out in the +empty sky when we look up at it from a cellar or deep well. +</p> + +<p> +On the exquisite morning which followed, the earth rose with the sun. +Siebenkæs had his friend of all time in his head and heart more than +the unknown of yesterday; although, at the same time, he took care that +his path should lead him by the ocean, and the shell out of which that +Venus had arisen—for mere curiosity’s sake—which led to no result. +And so he waded away through the moist radiance and cloudy vapour of +the glittering silver-mine, tearing down in his passage the +gossamer-wreaths all behung with seed-pearls of dew which hung upon the +flowers; brushing (in his eagerness to reach his Olympus of yesterday) +the chilled butterflies and dew-drops from off the branches, all +a-flutter with the insect swarms (the key-board of a harmonica framed +in flowers). He climbed to his place in the great “Auditorium” all +delight at length. Bayreuth lay behind a glowing drop-curtain of mist. +The sun (in his character of “king” of this drama) stood on a hill-top, +and looked down at this many-tinted curtain, which took fire and +blazed, while the morning breezes caught and bore away its fluttering, +sparkling, tinder fragments, and scattered them over the gardens and +the flowers. And soon nothing save the sun was shining; nothing round +him now except the sky. Amid this radiance Siebenkæs made his entry +into his dear friend’s camp of recreation and head-quarter city, +whereof all the buildings looked as if they were a glittering, solider +sort of air-and-magic castles fallen down from the æther. It was +strange, but, on noticing certain window-curtains drawn in (which the +street breeze had been toying with), he could scarcely help feeling +certain that it was the “Unknown” of yesterday who was doing it, +although at that time of the morning (it was barely eight o’clock) a +Bayreuth lady would have as little got through her flower-sleep as the +red mouse-ear, or the Alpine hawksbeard.<a name="div2Ref_62" href="#div2_62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> His heart beat quicker at +every street. It was quite a pleasure to him to lose his way a little, +as to some extent delaying and adding to his happiness. At length he +attained his perihelion—that is to say—reached the Sun (Hotel), where +was the metallic sun which had attracted to it <i>his</i> comet, as the +astronomical sun does comets in general. He inquired the number of +Leibgeber’s room; they said it was number 8, at the back of the house, +but that he had gone that day on a trip into Swabia, unless he was +still upstairs. Fortunately there just then came in from the street an +individual who testified to the correctness of the latter hypothesis, +and wagged his tail at sight of Siebenkæs—Leibgeber’s dog to wit. +</p> + +<p> +To storm up the stairs, to burst open the door of joy, to fall upon the +beloved breast, was the work of a single instant; and then the barren +minutes of life passed unseen and unheard by the close, silent union of +two human creatures, who lay clinging together on the waters of life, +like two shipwrecked brothers floating, embracing and embraced, on the +chill waves, with nothing left them save the heart they die upon.... +</p> + +<p> +As yet they had not said a word to one another. Firmian, whom a longer +continuance of troubles had made the weaker of the two, wept without +disguise at sight of the face of his newly recovered friend. Heinrich’s +features were drawn as if by pain. They both had their hats still on. +Leibgeber, in his embarrassment, could think of nothing to hold on to +except the bell-rope. The waiter came running in. “Oh! it’s nothing!” +said Leibgeber; “except, by the way, that I shan’t go out now. Heaven +grant,” he added, “that we may get fairly into the thick of a long +talk! Drag me into one, brother!” +</p> + +<p> +He had no difficulty in beginning one with the pragmatic detailing of +the <i>Nouvelle du Jour</i>—or rather <i>de la Nuit</i>—in short, the town +(or, +more properly speaking, the country) news of what had taken place on +the previous day in the vicinity of the veil of the beautiful <i>Je ne +sais quoi</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“I know her” (Leibgeber answered), “as I know my own pulse; but I don’t +intend to say anything whatever about her just now. I should be obliged +to sit still and wait here for such a time. Put the whole thing off +till we are sitting in Abraham’s warm bosom in the Hermitage, which is +the second heaven of Bayreuth, next to Fantaisie,—for Fantaisie is the +first heaven, and the whole country is the third.” +</p> + +<p> +They then made an ascent into heaven in every fresh street they came +to, and also in every subject of conversation which they fell upon. +“You shall knock my head off its stalk like a poppy,” said Leibgeber, +on Firmian’s betraying (I regret to say) as great a curiosity as the +reader’s own to know the secret, “before I transform <i>my</i> mysteries +into <i>yours</i>, either to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after that. Thus +much I will tell you, that your ‘Selections from the Devil’s Papers’ +(your ‘Evening Journal’ contains matter more morbific) are perfectly +divine, and very heavenly indeed, and not at all bad, and by no means +without beauties; but, on the whole (let us say), passable enough.” +Leibgeber then told him how delighted he was with the work, and how it +surprised him that he, a lawyer in a little country town, with nobody +in it but a parcel of shopkeepers and juristic souls, with a sprinkling +of higher officialities, should have managed to rise in these satires +to such a freedom and purity of art; and, indeed, when <i>I</i> first read +the ‘Selections from the Devil’s Papers,’ I said, myself now and then, +“I am sure <i>I</i> couldn’t have written anything of the kind in Hof in +Voigtland, and I <i>have</i> written one or two pretty good things there, +too.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber placed a crown on the top of the laurel wreath by declaring +that it was much easier for him to laugh at the world aloud, and with +both lips, than under his breath and with the pen, and this in +accordance with well-tried rules of art. Siebenkæs was beyond himself +with delight at his friend’s praise. But let no one grudge a pleasure +of this sort to our advocate, or to any other worker who, in solitude, +and without a single soul to give him a word of praise, has gone +steadfastly forward along the path of art which he has honestly chosen, +unsupported, unassisted by the smallest encouragement of any kind, +whom, at last, on reaching the goal, the fragrance of a leaf or two of +laurel from a friend’s hand, penetrates, strengthens, and recompenses, +with an aroma as of Araby the Blest. If even the far-famed and the +self-satisfied stand in need of a little of the warmth which is +derived from other people’s opinions, how much more the diffident and +the unknown! Ah! lucky Firmian! to what a distance in the far +south-south-west did the passing thunder-storms of thy life now go +drifting away. When the sun fell upon them, nothing of them was to be +seen but a gentle fall of rain. +</p> + +<p> +At the <i>table d’hôte</i> he observed with delight, in the case of +Leibgeber, how wonderfully a constant intercourse with men and cities +loosens the tongue though, at the same time, the heart puts on the +bridle which has been taken from the lips. Leibgeber thought nothing of +talking about himself, and this in the most humorous manner, before all +sorts of grand councillors of state and chancery officials dining at +the Sun—a thing which he, a cabined, cribbed, confined parish advocate +would scarce have dared even after a good bottle of wine. As the +discourse which he delivered on this occasion pleased the parish +advocate, I shall build it into this history, and place over it the +superscription— +</p> + +<h3>LEIBGEBER’S DINNER SPEECH.</h3> + +<p> +“I think I may venture to say that of all the Christians and persons of +name and title seated at this table, not one was made into one with +such wonderful difficulty as I was. My mother, a native of Gascony, was +on her way to Holland, by sea, from London, where she had left my +father as diocesan of a German community. But, never since there has +been such a thing on the face of the earth as a councillor of the +German empire, did the German Ocean rage and insurge so terrifically as +upon the occasion in question when it was my mother’s lot to be +crossing it. Pour all hell, hissing lakes of brimstone, boiling copper, +splattering devils, and all, into the cold ocean, and observe the +crackling, the roaring, and the seething of the hell-flames and +ocean-waves contending, till one of these hostile elements swallow up +the other, and you have a faint (but, at dinner-time, a sufficient) +idea of the infernal storm in which I came upon the sea, and into the +world. When I tell you that the main braces, the topsail sheets, and +the main topgallant stays (to say nothing of the crossjack braces and +fore topgallant halyards, which were in a worse state still)—and when, +moreover, the mizen topsail, and the foretop mast staysail rigging, and +the flying jib (to say nothing of the spanker)—when things so +accustomed to the sea as these (I say) felt as if their <i>last hour</i> was +come, it was a real ocean miracle that a creature so tender as I was at +that time should have managed to commence his <i>first</i>. I had about as +much flesh on my body then as I have fat now, and may have weighed, at +the outside, about four Nürnberg pounds, which (if we may credit the +authority of the best anatomical theatres) is at the present moment +about the weight of my brain alone. Besides which, I was the merest of +beginners. I had seen absolutely nothing of the world, except this +infernal gale. I was a creature, not so much of <i>few</i> years as of +<i>none</i> at all (though everybody’s life commences some nine months +sooner than the parish registers indicate), excessively tender and +delicate—having been (in opposition to all the rules of hygiene) kept +much too warm, swaddled, and coddled during these very first nine +months in question, when I ought rather to have been undergoing a +preparation of some kind to enable me to bear the chill atmosphere of +this world. And thus, quarter-grown, a tender flower-bud, liquidly soft +as first love, when I made my appearance during a storm such as was +raging (I added one or two feeble squeaks, with some difficulty, to its +roar), what was to be expected was, that I should be extinguished +altogether, even before it calmed down. People didn’t like the idea of +my going without something in the shape of a name—without some little +vestige of Christianity of some kind—out of this world, which is a +place whence we <i>do</i> carry away even less than we bring into it with +us. But the grand difficulty experienced was that of <i>standing</i> +godfather, in a rolling, plunging vessel, which pitched everything and +everybody higgledy-piggledy that wasn’t made fast. The chaplain was +(luckily) lying in a hammock, and he baptized down out of thence. My +godfather was the boatswain, who held me for five whole minutes; but +inasmuch as he couldn’t, without help, stand steady enough to enable +the chaplain to touch my brow with the water without missing me, he was +held by the barber’s mate, who was made fast to a marine, who was made +fast to a boatswain’s mate, who was made fast to the master-at-arms, +who sat upon the knee of an old bluejacket, who held on to him like +grim death. +</p> + +<p> +“However, neither the ship nor the child (as I afterwards ascertained) +came to any detriment; but you all see, do you not, that, hard as it is +for any one amid the storms of life, to become, and continue, a +Christian, or to get a name—be it in a directory, in a literary +gazette, in a herald’s college, or upon a medal—yet there are few who +have had the same difficulty as I have had in acquiring the mere <i>first +elements</i> of a name—the groundwork, the binomial root, of a Christian +name, whereon, at a subsequent period, the other <i>great</i> name might be +engrafted—and to get hold of a faint smattering of Christianity, as +much as a catechumen and candidate as yet in a speechless and sucking +condition might be capable of. There is but one thing more difficult to +make; the greatest princes and heroes can only do it once in their +lives—the mightiest geniuses—even the three electors of the Church, +the Emperor of Germany himself, with all their united efforts, can’t do +more, were they to sit for years, stamping in the mint with all the +latest improvements in coining machinery.” +</p> + +<p> +The whole of the company entreated him to explain what this was that +was so hard to frame. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis a crown prince,” he answered, quietly; “even a reigning sovereign +finds it no easy matter to produce an appanaged prince—but, let him +try as he will, even in the best days of his life, he can never produce +more than one specimen of a crown prince; for a Seminarist of that sort +is none of your accessory-works, but the prime mover, the regulator, +the striking and driving-wheel of the whole nation. On the other hand, +gentry, counts, barons, chamberlains, staff-officers, and above all, +common people and subjects of the altogether every-day sort—to be +brief, a scurvy crew of that description—a <i>generatio æquivoca</i>—can +be brought into being by a prince with such wonderful ease that he +creates these <i>lusus naturæ</i> and virgin swarms, or <i>protoplasmata</i>, in +considerable numbers even in his earlier days, although in riper years +he may not manage to turn out an heir to his throne. Yet, after so much +preliminary drill, so many trial-shots, one would have taken one’s oath +the other way!” +</p> + +<h3>END OF LEIBGEBER’S TABLE-TALK.</h3> + +<p> +In the afternoon they paid a visit to that verdant, pleasure place, the +Hermitage, and the alley leading thither seemed to their happy hearts +to be a path cut through some beauteous grove of gladness. That young +bird of passage, Spring, was encamped all over the plain around, her +unladen floral treasures scattered about the meadows, and floating down +the streams, while the birds were drawn up into air upon long sunbeams, +and the world of winged creatures hovered all about in intoxication of +bliss amid the exquisite scents shed abroad by kind Nature. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber determined to pour out his heart and his secret at the +Hermitage that day, and (by way of preliminary) a bottle of wine or so +to begin with. +</p> + +<p> +He begged and constrained Siebenkæs first of all to deliver a +diary-lecture concerning his adventures by land and by water up to the +present time. Firmian complied, but with discretion. Over his stomach’s +barren year, over his hard times, over the (metaphorical) winter of his +life (upon whose snow he had had to make his nest, icebird-like), and +over all the bitter northerly wind, which drives a man to <span class="sc2">BURY</span> himself +in the earth (as soldiers do)—over all these he passed lightly and +quickly. I myself must approve of him for so doing; firstly, because a +man would be none who should shed a bigger tear over wounds of poverty +than a young lady drops at the piercing of her ears, for in both cases +the wounds become points of suspension for jewels; secondly, because +Siebenkæs would not cause his friend the slightest pain on the score of +their change of names, the main source of all his hunger-springs. +However, his friend knew, and sympathised with him sufficiently to +consider that his pale, faded face and his sunken eyes constituted a +sufficient almanac month-emblem of his frost-month or winter-picture of +the snowed-up tracts of his life-road. +</p> + +<p> +But when Siebenkæs came to speak of the deep and secret wounds of his +soul, it was all he could do to keep back the drops of blood-water +which pressed to his eyes; I mean the subject of Lenette’s hatred and +love. But while he drew a very indulgent picture of her little love for +him, and her great love for Stiefel, he used much brighter colours for +the historical piece which he painted of her admirable behaviour to the +Venner, and of that gentleman’s wickedness in general. +</p> + +<p> +“As soon as you have done,” said Leibgeber, “you must allow yourself to +be informed that women are not <i>fallen</i> angels, but <span class="sc2">FALLING</span> ones. By +all the heavens! while we stand patient, like sheep being shorn, they +stick the shears oftener into our skins than into our wool. I should +think of the fair sex if I were to cross the bridge of St. Angelo at +Rome, for there are twelve statues of angels there, holding the +implements of the Passion, each a different one; one has the nails, +another the reed, another the dice, and similarly each woman has a +peculiar torture-instrument of her own to apply to us poor lambs. Whom, +think you, for instance now, is the Palladium of yesterday, your +unknown beauty, going to tether to her bed-post with the nose-ring of a +wedding-ring? But I must tell you about her. She is altogether +glorious: she is poetic; full of romantic, enthusiastic admiration for +the British, and for intellectual people in general (consequently for +me), and lives with an aristocratic English lady, a sort of companion +to Lady Craven and the Margrave at Fantaisie yonder. She has nothing, +and accepts nothing; is poor and proud, daring to rashness, and pure as +the day; and she signs herself ‘<i>Nathalie Aquiliana</i>.’ Do you know +who’s going to be her husband? A horrible, burnt-out, used-up wretch—a +feeble, puny creature, whose egg-shell was chipped a week or two before +its time, and who now goes cheeping about our toes like a chicken with +the pip; a fellow who copies Heliogabalus (who put on a new ring every +day) in the matter of wedding-rings; a hop-o’-my-thumb whom I could +sneeze over the North Pole (and I should like very much to do it), and +whom I have the less need to give you any description of, inasmuch as +you have just given <i>me</i> one of him yourself: when I tell you his name, +you will see that you know him pretty well. This magnificent creature +is going to be married to the Venner Rosa von Meyern!” +</p> + +<p> +Firmian fell, not <i>from</i> the clouds, but right <i>into</i> them. To make a +long tale short, this Nathalie is the Heimlicher’s niece, of whom +Leibgeber wrote some account in our first volume. “But, listen,” +continued Leibgeber, “I will let myself be hewn and hacked into crumbs +smaller than those of Poland—into clippings not big enough to cover a +Hebrew vowel—if this affair comes to anything; for I am going to put a +stop to it.” +</p> + +<p> +Since Leibgeber (as we know) was in the habit of talking to the lady +every day (his spotless soul and his bold mind having unspeakable +attractions for her), all he had to do in order to break the marriage +off, was simply to repeat to her what Siebenkæs had told him concerning +her bridegroom elect. It was his intimacy with her, and his resemblance +to Siebenkæs which had led to her mistaking Firmian for him on the +evening of his arrival. +</p> + +<p> +The majority of my readers will urge against me and Leibgeber the same +objection which Siebenkæs brought forward—that, Nathalie’s love and +marriage for money were quite out of harmony with her character, and +her disregard for riches. But, in one word, all she had ever as yet +seen of that gaudy flycatcher, Mr. Rosa, was his Esau’s hand, that, is +to say, his writing, <i>i. e</i>. his Jacob’s voice; he had only written her +a few irreprehensible, sentimental letters of assurance (pin-papers, +stuck full of Cupid’s darts and stitching-needles), and so given +guarantee of the <i>documentary</i> nobility of his heart.... The +Heimlicher, moreover, had written to his niece, saying, on St. +Pancrasius’ day (May 12th, that is in four days’ time), the Venner +would come and present himself, and if she refused him, let her never +call herself his niece again, and starve in her native village for all +he cared. +</p> + +<p> +But, speaking as a man of honour, I really have never had above three +of Rosa’s letters in my hands for two or three minutes, and in my +pocket for about an hour; and they were really not so very bad—far +more moral than their author. +</p> + +<p> +Just as Leibgeber said he would assume the office of consistory, and +divorce Nathalie from Rosa before their marriage, she came driving up, +with one or two lady friends, and got out of the carriage; but instead +of going with them to where the company were assembling, she went away +alone, by a solitary side walk, to the so-called Temple. In her haste +she had not noticed her friend Leibgeber sitting opposite the stables. +I ought to explain here that when the Bayreuthians go to the Hermitage +they have been in the habit, ever since the days of the Margrave, of +sitting in a little wood, all breezes and cool shade, in front of the +extensive farm-buildings and stables, but having the loveliest of +prospects just at their backs, which they could easily substitute for +the blank wall upon which they feast their gaze, by merely getting up +and going a little way out of the wood on either side. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber told Siebenkæs he could take him to her in a moment, as she +would be sure to sit down in the temple (as she usually did) to enjoy +the enchanting view of the city towers and the hills, as they lay in +the light of the evening sun beyond the shrubberies. He added that, +unfortunately, she cared too little about appearances; and <i>would</i> go +to the summer-house all by herself, greatly to the distress of the +English lady, who, after the manner of her countrywomen, didn’t like +going anywhere alone, and wouldn’t trust herself to go near even a +gentleman’s clothes cupboard without an Insurance Company and Bible +Society of women with her to protect her. He said he had it on good +authority that a British lady never permitted the <i>idea</i> of a <i>man</i> to +enter her head without at once surrounding it with the number of ideas +of <i>women</i>, necessary to bridle and restrain him, should he begin +behaving (in the four chambers of her brain) with that amount of +freedom which he might employ if <i>at home</i> there. +</p> + +<p> +They found Nathalie in the open temple, with some papers in her hand. +“I bring you our author of the ‘Selections from the Devil’s Papers,’” +said Leibgeber, “which I see you are just reading; will you allow me to +introduce him to you?” After a passing blush at having mistaken +Siebenkæs for Leibgeber, in Fantaisie, she said to him, very kindly and +pleasantly, “It would take very little to make me mistake you for your +friend again, Mr. Siebenkæs; and you seem almost exactly alike in mind, +as well as in body. Your satire is often exactly like his; it is only +your graver ‘Appendices’ which I was just reading, and which I like +very much, that seem to me as if they hadn’t been written by him.” +</p> + +<p> +I have not at present time to make—(for Leibgeber’s unauthorized +communication to one friend of the papers of another)—excuses +occupying long pages of print to readers who may insist upon extreme +delicacy in matters of this description. Suffice it to say that +Leibgeber took it for granted that every one who liked <i>him</i> would join +with him in liking his friends, and that Siebenkæs (and even Nathalie) +would see nothing in his unhesitatingly communicating these papers, but +a mere passing on of a friendly circular letter, pre-supposing, as he +did, the existence between them of a triple elective affinity. +</p> + +<p> +Nathalie scanned the pair—particularly Leibgeber, whose big dog she +was stroking—with a kindly and observant look of comparison, as if she +were trying to find out dissimilarities between them; for, in fact, +Siebenkæs seemed to her to be scarcely as like his friend as she had +thought. He was taller and slighter, and younger in the face; but this +was because Leibgeber, whose shoulders and chest were more strongly +built, bent his strange, earnest face more forward when he talked, as +if he were speaking into the earth. He himself said he never <i>had</i> +looked really young, not even at his baptism—as his baptismal +certificate would prove—and wasn’t likely to grow much younger now +till he arrived at his second childhood. But when Leibgeber +straightened his back somewhat, and Siebenkæs bent his a little, they +looked very much like one another; however, this is more a hint for the +drawer-up of their passports than anything else. +</p> + +<p> +Let us felicitate the Kuhschnappel lawyer on this opportunity of +enjoying a few minutes’ conversation with a lady of position, and of +such many-sided cultivation as even to be capable of appreciating +satires. All <i>he</i> wished was that a phœnix of this sort—such as, +hitherto, he had only seen a pinch or so of the ashes of in actual +life, or a phœnix-feather or two preserved in a book—might not take +wing and disappear <i>instanter</i>; but that he might be lucky enough to +listen to a long talk between her and Leibgeber, as well as help to +spin it out himself. But suddenly her Bayreuth friends came hurrying up +to say that the fountains were just going to play, and there wasn’t a +moment to be lost. The whole party, therefore, went towards the +waterworks, Siebenkæs’ whole care being to keep as close as he could to +the noblest of the spectatresses. +</p> + +<p> +They stood by the basin, and looked at the beautiful water artifices, +which, no doubt, have long since played before the reader, either on +the spot, or in the pages of the various writers of travels, who have +expressed themselves on the subject of them at sufficient length, and +in adequate terms of laudation. All kinds of mythologic demigod-ical +demibeasts spouted forth streams; and from out this world, peopled with +water-gods, there spouted a crystal forest, whose descending branches, +liana-like, took root again in the earth. They enjoyed for a long while +the sight of this talkative, intercommingling water-world. At length +the fluttering, ever-growing water-forms sank down and died; the +transparent lily-stems grew shorter and shorter, as they watched them. +“Why is it, I wonder?” said Nathalie to Siebenkæs, “that a waterfall +lifts up one’s heart; but this dying-down of these springing jets, this +visible sinking away of these grand streaming beams of water, always +makes me sad and anxious? We never see any such falling in of high +things in real life.” +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs was thinking out the apt and comprehensive reply to this true +and just expression of Nathalie’s feeling, when all at once she jumped +into the water to rescue, with as little delay as possible, a child who +had fallen in, a few steps away from her; for the water was there about +waist-deep. Before the men who were present had so much as <i>thought +about</i> it, she had <i>done</i> it; and she was right, for in this case +rapidity without reflection was the good and true thing. She lifted the +child out, and gave it to the women; but Siebenkæs and Leibgeber took +her hands, and lightly raised the fiery creature (all blushes, of body +and of soul) on to the bank. “What does it matter?” she said, with a +smile, to the alarmed Siebenkæs, “I shall be none the worse,” and +hurried away with her friends (who were all shocked into +speechlessness), having first begged Leibgeber to come next evening, +with his friend, to Fantaisie. “That of course I shall do,” he said; +“but first of all, I am coming to see you by myself early in the +morning.” +</p> + +<p> +The crying need of our two friends was now to be alone with one +another. Leibgeber, under the new excitement, could scarce wait to +attain the birch wood, where he meant to continue their previous +conversation regarding Siebenkæs’ domestic and conjugal affairs. With +respect to Nathalie, he briefly pointed out to his astonished friend +that what so much delighted him in her was just the unhesitating, +downright straightforwardness which marked all her thoughts and +actions, and her manly cheerfulness, athwart which the world, and +poverty, and chances and accidents of every kind merely passed floating +away, like light, shining summer clouds, never darkening her day. “Now +as regards you and your Lenette,” he went on (when they reached the +solitude of the little wood), as quietly as if he had been talking +continuously up to that instant, “if I were in your place, I should +take an alterative, and get rid of the hard gall-stone of matrimony for +good and all. You will never really be able to bear the pain of the +bonds of wedlock, though you scrape and scratch away at them for years +to come with all your finest hair-saws and bone-saws. The Divorce Court +will give <i>one</i> grand cut and tear—and there you are, free of one +another for ever and ever.” +</p> + +<p> +The idea of a divorce terrified Siebenkæs, although he saw very clearly +that it was the only possible breaking-point for the storm-clouds of +his life. He was far from grudging to Lenette either her freedom, or +the marriage with Stiefel, which would infallibly result; but he +felt quite sure that, however much she might wish for it, she never +would consent to an enforced separation, on account of her strong +regard for appearances,—also that on their road to this parting both +she and he would have to pass many a bitter hour of heart-strain and +nerve-fever,—and that they could hardly afford to pay for a betrothal, +much less for a divorce. +</p> + +<p> +It was likewise an accessory circumstance, that it was more than he +could bear to think of the sight of the poor innocent soul, who had +shivered at his side through so many a cold storm of life, going away +for ever from his home, and from his arms—ay, and with <i>that +handkerchief</i> in her hand, too! +</p> + +<p> +All these considerations, with many stronger, and many weaker, he laid +before his friend, finishing up with this final one: “I assure you, +moreover, that if she went away from me, tag and baggage, and left me +by myself in that empty room (as in a grave), and in all the blank, +cleared-out spaces, where, when all’s said and done, we have sat +together through so many kindly happy hours, and seen the flowers +growing green about us—she never could pass by my window (while she +bore my name, at all events, though no longer mine), but something +within me would bid me throw myself down, and dash myself in pieces at +her feet. Would it not be ten times better,” he continued in an altered +tone, “to wait till I fall down upstairs in the room (or what does my +giddiness mean), and be taken out of the window, and out of the world, +in a better fashion? Friend Death would take his long erasing knife, +and scrape my name (and other blots into the bargain) out of her +marriage-lines.” +</p> + +<p> +Contrary to all expectation, this seemed to make Leibgeber merrier and +livelier than ever. “Do so!” he said; “it’s the very thing! Die by all +means! The funeral expenses can’t possibly come to anything approaching +the costs of the other kind of separation; and besides, you belong to +the Burial Society.” Siebenkæs stared at him in astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +He went on in a tone of the utmost indifference: “Only I must tell you +it will do neither of us much good, if you dawdle a long time at your +saddling and bridling, and take a year or two about your dying. I +should think it much more to the purpose were you to be off to +Kuhschnappel as soon as ever you can, take to your sick-bed and +death-bed directly you get there; and die as quickly as ever you can +manage it. And I’ll give you my reasons. For one thing your Lenette’s +year of mourning would be out just before Advent, so that she would +require no dispensation, if she wanted to marry Peltzstiefel before +Christmas. It would suit me very well, too, for I could then disappear +in the crowd, and I shouldn’t see you again for some considerable time +to come. Besides, it is anything but a matter of indifference to +yourself, for of course the sooner you’re appointed Inspector the +better.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is the very first of your jokes, dear old Henry,” said Siebenkæs, +“of which I don’t understand one single word.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber, with a disturbed countenance, whereon a whole history of the +world was legible, and which indicated, as well as gave rise to, the +greatest possible anticipation of something of immense importance to +come, pulled a letter from his pocket and handed it to Siebenkæs in +silence. It was a letter of appointment by the Count von Vaduz, +constituting Leibgeber Inspector of the Chief Bailiwick of Vaduz. He +next handed him a letter in the count’s handwriting. While Firmian was +reading the letter, Leibgeber brought out his pocket-diary, and calmly +muttered to himself, “From the quarter-day after Whitsunday, it says, +does it not? to the time when I am to enter upon my office; that is to +say, from to-day—St. Stanislaus’ Day. Ah! only think of that—how odd +it seems—from St. Stanislaus’ day one, two, three, four—<i>four</i> weeks +and a half.” +</p> + +<p> +Firmian, much pleased, was handing him back the letter, but he wouldn’t +take it, but pressed it back to him, saying, “I read it long ago, long +before <i>you</i> did. Put it in your pocket.” +</p> + +<p> +And here Heinrich, in a burst of solemn, impassioned, humoristic +enthusiasm, knelt down in the middle of a long narrow path, which +looked between the trees of the thick grove like some subterranean +passage (the weathercock of the distant steeple ended off the +perspective of it as if with a turnstile)—knelt down facing the west, +and gazed through the long green hollow way upon the evening sun, +sinking earthward like some brilliant meteor, its broad beams darting +down upon the long green path, like forest-water gilt by the spring; he +gazed fixedly at it, and his eyes all blinded (and lighted up) by its +sheen, he began to speak as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“If there be a good spirit near me, or a guardian angel of mine or of +his, or if <i>thy</i> spirit surviveth still thine ashes, oh! my old, +<i>kind</i>, loving father, so deep in thy grave, then draw near, oh! thou +dim and ancient shade, and grant to thy stupid, silly son (still +limping about here in this fluttering, ragged shirt of a body) this +one, one favour, the first and the last, and enter into Firmian’s +heart, and (while giving it a good sound shaking) address it as +follows: ‘Die, Firmian, for my son’s sake, though it be but in jest and +in appearance only. Throw away your own name, go in his (which was +yours before) to Vaduz as Inspector, and give yourself out to be him. +My poor son here (like that <i>Joujou de Normandie</i> whereon he is +sticking, which circles round the sun upon strings of sunbeams) would +fain go whirling about <i>upon</i> said Joujou himself for a little while +longer. Before all you parrots the ring of eternity is still hanging, +and you can hop on to it and rock upon it if you will. But he does not +see the ring; don’t deprive the poor Poll-parrot of the pleasure of +hopping about on the perch of this earth till, when he has wound his +life’s thread some sixty times about its reels, the reel gives a ring +and a snap, the thread breaks, and all his fun is over and done!’ Oh! +kind spirit of my father, stir up my friend’s heart this day, and guide +his tongue, that it may not say ‘No,’ when I ask him, ‘Will you do all +this.’” Blinded by the evening sun, he felt for Firmian’s hand, crying, +“Where’s your hand, dear friend? and do not say ‘No.’” +</p> + +<p> +But Firmian, quite carried away by emotion (for this sudden outburst of +Leibgeber’s long pent-up excitement was most contagious), speechless, +and all in tears, like an evening shade, knelt down before his friend +and fell on his breast, and said in a low tone (for he could do no +otherwise), “I am ready to die for you a thousand deaths, any death you +please: only say what death I can die for you. All I ask is, tell me +plainly what you would have me do. I swear to you beforehand that I +will do whatever you tell me; I swear it by your dear father’s soul. I +will gladly give my life for you, and you know I have nothing but that +to give.” Heinrich said, in a most unusually subdued voice, “Let’s get +away in among the Bayreuthians. I certainly have an attack of +hydrothorax this afternoon, or else a hot mineral spring inside my +waistcoat; ’pon my word, any ordinary heart ought to have a +swimming-belt on, or a scaphander, in a vapour-bath of this kind.” But +up at the table under the trees, among the people come to keep the +Whitsuntide fair, the great holiday and festival of spring—up there +among people all happy and enjoying themselves, emotion was easier to +conquer. Here Heinrich quickly unrolled the ground-plans and elevations +of his castle in the air, the building grants of his Tower of Babel. To +the Count von Vaduz (whose ears and heart opened and expanded to him +hungrily) he had given his sacred word of honour that he would return +to him as Inspector. But his idea was that his dear coadjutor and +substitute, <i>cum spe succedendi</i>, Firmian, should take his place and +personate him: Firmian, who was such a tautology of him in mind and +body, that both the count, and the theory of distinctive differences +itself, would have been puzzled to tell one of them from the other. +Even in the worst of years the Inspectorship brought in an income of +1200 thalers; that is to say, the exact amount of Firmian’s whole +inheritance (now sealed up with the law’s leaden signet); so that when +Siebenkæs re-assumed his old name of Leibgeber, he would regain just +what he had lost by changing it. “For,” said Leibgeber, “now that I +have read your ‘Devil’s Papers,’ I can’t endure or swallow the notion +of your lying fallow any longer in Kuhschnappel; sitting there in +solitude, like a pelican (or an unicorn, or an unknown hermit) in the +wilderness. Now, will it take you as long to think about the matter as +it takes the Chief Clerk of the Chancellery there to shake the ashes +out of his pipe, when I tell you that, though <i>you</i> are a fellow who +could fill any and every office in the world splendidly, there’s only +one calling I can follow—that of a <i>Grazioso</i>; for though I <i>know</i> +more than most people, I can’t put my knowledge to any practical use +except satirising, and my language is a parti-coloured <i>Lingua Franca</i>, +my head a Proteus, and I myself a delightful compilation of the devil +and his grandmother. Besides, if I <i>could</i> do anything else, I +<i>wouldn’t</i>. What, am I, in the very flower of my days, to stamp +and neigh, like a state draught-horse, a government prisoner in +the donjon-keep, the shoeing travis of some miserable office +counting-house, with nothing to look at but my saddle and bridle +hanging on the stable-wall, and the loveliest Parnassuses and Tempe +valleys wooing the free feet of the sons of the Muses just outside! In +the very years when my milk of life is inclined to throw out a little +cream—(and the years when a fellow sours and turns to curds and whey +come on so fast)—shall I go and throw the rennet of an appointment +into my morning milk? Now, as for <i>you</i>, <i>you</i> have a different song +to +sing altogether; you are half a man of office already, and you are +married into the bargain. Ah! it will beat all ‘Bremish Contributions +to the Pleasures of Wit and Understanding;’ it will be a business far +beyond every existing comic opera, and every funny novel that ever was +written, when I go back to Kuhschnappel with you, and you make your +will and depart this life. And then when, after we have paid you the +last honours, you jump up again (in a good deal of a hurry) and take +yourself off to receive greater honours still; not to enter into the +bliss of the departed so much as to become a <i>bonâ fide</i> live +Inspector; not to appear before a tribunal, but to take your seat upon +one yourself. Joke upon joke wherever we turn! I can’t quite see <i>all</i> +the consequences of it yet, or only in a very half-and-half sort of +way; the burial club will have to pay your afflicted widow (you can +pay them back again when you’re in cash). Death will fop off your +ring-finger, all swollen with the betrothal ring. Your widow will be +able to marry anybody she pleases (yourself if she likes), and so will +you.” +</p> + +<p> +Here, all of a sudden, Leibgeber slapped his leg forty times running, +and cried, “Ey! Ey! Ey! Ey! Ey! I can hardly wait till you’re fairly +dead and off the hooks; only think of this, your death may make two +women widows instead of one. I will persuade Nathalie to insure herself +a pension of 200 dollars a year, payable on your death, in the Royal +Prussian Provident Widows’ Fund<a name="div2Ref_63" href="#div2_63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> (you can pay them it back again as +soon as you get your money). When your widow that is to be gives the +Venner the sack, <i>you</i> must privately provide <i>her</i> with a sack of +breadfruit. And supposing you really could never pay them back, and +were to die in sober earnest, <i>I</i> should take care that their treasury +was none the worse for it as soon as I was in funds again.” For +Leibgeber lived in a constant mysterious state of intermittent fever +between riches and poverty (which he has never explained), or, to use +his own expression, between the inspiration and expiration of that +breath of life (Aura Vitalis) called money. Any other but this man, who +played his game of life with such a dashing boldness, whose blazing +fire for the true, the right, and the unselfish, had gleamed upon the +advocate for so many a year as if from a lighthouse-tower, would have +startled Siebenkæs, particularly in his capacity of lawyer, or have +made him very angry, instead of over-persuading him. But Leibgeber +thoroughly saturated him, nay, burnt him through and through with the +etherial playfulness of his humour, and hurried him resistlessly on to +the commission of a mimic deception, which had no aim of selfish +untruthfulness or deceit. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian, however, notwithstanding his intoxication of mind, retained +sufficient control over himself to think, at least, of the risk which +Leibgeber would run in this transaction. “Suppose,” said he, “anybody +should come across my dear <i>real</i> Heinrich (whose name I steal) in the +vicinity of me, a coiner of false names, what then? +</p> + +<p> +“Nobody ever will,” said Heinrich, “for as soon as you have re-assumed +your own canonical name of Leibgeber, and given up ‘Firmian +Stanislaus,’ which was conferred upon me at such a stormy baptismal +font (and Heaven grant you may do so!), I shall, under names altogether +unheard of—(perhaps, indeed, that I may have the gratification of +being able to keep 365 name-days in the course of the year, I shall +take every name in the calendar, one after the other)—I shall throw +myself off the dry land (under these names or some of them) into the +great ocean, and propel myself with my dorsal, ventral, and caudal fins +(and any others I may have besides), through the waves and the billows +of life towards the thick, muddy sea of death; so that ’twill probably +be many a day before we meet again.” +</p> + +<p> +He gazed fixedly towards the sun, then sinking in glory beyond +Bayreuth; his motionless eyes shone with a moister sheen, and he +continued, more slowly, thus: “Firmian, the Almanac says this is St. +Stanislaus’ Day; it is your name-day, and mine, and the death-day of +that wandering, migratory name, because you will have to give it up +after your mock death. I, poor devil as I am, would fain be serious +to-day—for the first time this many a long year. Go you home, alone, +through the village of Johannes; I shall go by the alley; we’ll meet +again at the inn. By Heaven! everything is so beautiful here, and so +rose-coloured, that one would think the Hermitage was a piece of the +sun. Don’t be very long, though!” +</p> + +<p> +But a sharp pang of pain shot, with swelling folds, athwart Heinrich’s +face, and he averted that image of sorrow and his blinded eyes—(which +were full of radiance, and of water, too)—and marched rapidly off past +the spectators, looking as if at something very far away with a face of +apparent attention. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian, alone, with tearful eyes, fronted the gentle sunlight +dissolving into varied tints over the face of the green-hued world. +Close beneath the sun-fire the deep gold-mine of an evening cloud was +falling in drops upon the hill-tops which lay under it; the wandering +shifting gold of the evening sky lay, all transparently, upon the +yellow-green buds and red and white hill-tops, whilst a great, +grand, immeasurable smoke, as if of an altar, cast a strange, magic +reflection—all shifting, distant, translucent hues—athwart the hills. +The hills and the happy earth, reflecting the sun as it sank, seemed to +be receiving him in their arms, and taking him into their embrace. But +at the moment when the sun dipped wholly beneath the earth, there came +(as it were) the angel of a higher light into this gleaming world +(which seemed, to Firmian’s tearful eyes, to tremble like some +flickering fiery meteor of the air); this angel advanced, flashing like +day, into the midst of the night-torch-dance of the living, who, at his +coming, turned pale, and halted still. But, as Firmian dried his eyes, +the sun set, the earth grew stiller and paler yet, and night, dewy and +wintry, came forth from the woods. +</p> + +<p> +But that melted heart of his longed for its fellows, and for all whom +it knew and loved; it throbbed insatiate in this lonely prison-cell, +our life; it yearned to love all humanity. Ah! the soul which has had +to give up much, or has lost much, is too, too wretched on such an +evening as this. +</p> + +<p> +In a blissful, tranced reverie, Firmian went his way through the +blossomy fragrance, among the American flowers which open to the sky of +<i>our</i> night, through the closed meadows (chambers of sleep), and under +dew-dropping flowers. The moon stood on the pinnacle of the heavenly +temple in the midday effulgence which the sun cast up to her from the +deeps beneath the earth and her evening-blushes. As Firmian passed +through the leaf-hidden village of Johannes (where the houses were all +scattered about in a great orchard), the evening bells from the distant +hamlets were lulling the slumbering spring to sleep with cradle-songs. +Æolian harps, breathed on by zephyrs, seemed to be sending forth their +tones from out the evening-red, their melodies flowed softly on into +the wide realm of sleep, and there took the form of dreams. Firmian’s +heart, moved to its very centre, yearned for love—and for very longing +he felt impelled to press his flowers into the white hands of a pretty +child in Johannes—just that he might <i>touch</i> a human hand. +</p> + +<p> +Go, dear Firmian, with that softened heart of yours, to your +deeply-moved friend, whose inner being, too, stretches its arms out +towards its likeness; for, to-day, you are nowhere so happy as +together. When Firmian entered their common chamber (which, was dark +save for the glow of the red twilight in the west), Heinrich turned to +meet him; they fell silently into each other’s arms and forgot all the +tears which burned within them, even those of joy. Their embrace ended, +but their silence did not. Heinrich threw himself on his bed, in his +clothes, and covered himself up. Firmian sank upon the other bed and +wept there, with closed lids. After an hour or two of excited fancy, +heated by visions and by pangs of pain, a soft light fell upon his +burning eyelids; he opened them, and there hung the pale, glowing moon +over against his window. He rose up; but when he saw his friend +standing pale and motionless, like a shadow cast by the moon upon the +wall—and suddenly there came up from a neighbouring garden (like a +nightingale’s voice awaking), Rust’s melody to the words— +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:20%; margin-top:0pt; text-indent:-18px"> +“’Tis not for this earthly land<br/> +That Friendship weaves her holy band”— +</p> + +<p class="noindent">he fell back under the load of bitter memory; an emotion, too great to +bear, a spasm, closed his sad eyes, and he said, in hollow accents, +</p> + +<p> +“Heinrich! oh believe in immortality. How can we love, if we perish!” +</p> + +<p> +“Peace, peace!” said Heinrich. “To-day I am keeping my name-day, +and that is enough; for man, certainly, has no birth-day, and, +consequently, no death-day either.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<p class="center">A CLOCK OF HUMAN BEINGS—A COLD SHOULDER—THE VENNER. +</p> + +<p> +When, in my last chapter, I spoke of ladies who were given to brevity +of sleep, and awoke six hours before their sisters at the Antipodes, I +think I did well not to cram into my twelfth chapter (among the +numerous events so tightly packed there) a model of a certain clock, +composed of men and women, which I invented a considerable time ago, +but to reserve it for this thirteenth chapter, where I shall now +introduce it, and set it up. I believe this humanity clock of mine was +suggested to me by Linnæus’ flower clock at Upsal, whose wheels were +the earth and the sun, and the figures on its dial were flowers, +whereof one always awoke and opened later than another. I was living at +the time in Scheerau, in the middle of the market-place, and had two +rooms. From the <i>front</i> room I was able to see all the market-place and +the palace buildings, while my back room looked into the Botanical +Gardens. Whoever may be living in these rooms now is in possession of a +delightful, ready-tuned harmony between the flower clock in the garden +and the mankind clock in the market-place. +</p> + +<p> +At 3 A.M. the yellow meadow goatsbeard awakes—also brides—and then, +too, the stable-boy begins rattling and feeding the horses under the +lodger. At 4 (on Sundays) awake the little hawksweed, and ladies who +are going to the Holy Communion (<i>chiming</i> clocks these may be called) +and the bakers. At 5, kitchen-maids and dairy-maids awake, and +buttercups; at 6, sowthistles and cooks. By 7, a good many of the +wardrobe women of the palace, and the salad in the Botanical Gardens, +are awake, as well as several tradeswomen. At 8, all their daughters +and the little yellow mouse-ear—all the colleges and the leaves of +flowers, piecrust, and law-papers, are open. At 9, the female +aristocracy begin to stir, and the marygolds, to say nothing of a +number of young ladies from the country, in town on a visit, glance out +of their windows. At 10 and 11, the Court ladies, the whole staff of +lords of the bedchamber, the green colewort and pippau of the Alps, and +the Princesses’ reader, arouse themselves from their morning slumber; +and (so brightly is the morning sun breaking in through the many-tinted +silken curtains) the whole Court curtails a morsel or so of its sleep. +At 12, the Prince; at 1, his consort, and the carnation in her +flower-vase—have their eyes open. What gets up at later hours in the +afternoon—about 4 o’clock, say—is nothing but the red hawksweed and +the night, watchman (a cuckoo clock), and these two are but evening +dials, or moon clocks. From the hot eyes of the poor devil who opens +them only at 5 (with the jalap), we turn our own away in sorrow; he is +a sick man, who has <i>taken</i> some of it (the jalap), and only passes +from fever-fancies of being griped with hot pincers to genuine, waking +spasms. +</p> + +<p> +I could never tell when it was 2 o’clock, because I, and a thousand +other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, were always asleep at +that hour; though I awoke, with the regularity of an accurate repeater, +at 3 in the afternoon and at 3 in the morning. +</p> + +<p> +Thus may we human creatures serve as flower clocks to higher +intelligences when our petals close upon our last bed, or as +sand-glasses when our sands of life are run so far out that they are +turned over into the other world. On such occasions, when seventy of +man’s years have ended and passed away, these higher intelligences may +say, “Another hour already! Good God! how time flies!” +</p> + +<p> +And this digression reminds me that it really <i>does</i> fly! Firmian and +Heinrich lived on in great cheerfulness of spirit towards the jocund +morning which was so close at hand, though the former could by no means +take root upon any chair or room-floor all the forenoon; for, in his +mind’s eye, the curtain kept always rising upon the <i>opera buffa e +seria</i> of his mock death, and displaying its burlesque situations. And +at present (as was always the case, indeed) the presence and example of +Leibgeber heightened his sense of humour and power of expressing the +same. Leibgeber, who had gone through all the stage-business and +scene-shifting of the sham death in an exhaustive manner weeks ago (in +fancy), was thinking little about it now. The problem occupying him at +present was how to extract the wick (that is to say, the bride) out of +Rosa’s wedding-torch, all painted and moulded as it was. Heinrich was +at all times forcible, free, and bold, furious and implacable as +regards anything unjust; and his righteous indignation often had much +the appearance of vengeance, as here in Rosa’s case, and in that of +Blaise. Firmian was more kindly; he spared and pardoned, often, indeed, +at the (apparent) expense of honour. <i>He</i> could never have plucked +Nathalie’s epistolary lover out of her bleeding heart with Leibgeber’s +forceps and knife. His friend, at leaving for Fantaisie that day, had +to promise the gentlest of behaviour, and, for a time, silence on the +subject of the Royal Prussian Widows’ Fund. It would, of course, have +made a terrific, bleeding wound in Nathalie’s feeling of rectitude had +the most distant hint been uttered of such a matter as metallic +compensation for a spiritual loss such as that involved in her +separation on moral grounds from the immoral Venner. She deserved to +conquer (and was well able to do so), with the prospect of her victory +reducing her to poverty. +</p> + +<p> +Heinrich did not come back till it was somewhat late, and his face was +a little troubled, though it was a happy face too. Rosa was discarded, +and Nathalie pained. The English lady was at Anspach with Lady Craven, +eating her butter—(for she made butter as well as books). When he had +read out to Nathalie all that was written on Rosa’s black board and +sin-register (which he did gravely, but perhaps louder than was +necessary, and with scrupulous truth), she rose up with that grand +grace which is a characteristic of enthusiasm of self-sacrifice: “If +you are yourself deceived in this as little as you are capable of +deceiving, and if I may believe your friend as I do you, I give you my +sacred word that I will not allow myself to be persuaded, or +constrained, to anything. But the subject of this conversation will be +here himself in a few days, and I owe it to him as well as to my own +honour, to hear him, as I have given my letters into his hands. Oh! it +is hard to have to speak so coldly!” As the moments passed, the rose +red of her cheek paled to rose-white. She leant it on her hand, and as +her eyes grew fuller, and tears dropped at last, she said, strongly and +firmly, “Be in no anxiety, I shall keep my word; and then, cost what it +may, I will tear myself from my friend, and go back to my poor people +in Schraplau. I have lived quite long enough in the great world, though +not <i>too</i> long.” +</p> + +<p> +Heinrich’s unusual seriousness had overpowered her. Her confidence in +his truth was immovable, and that (strange reason!) just because he had +never seemed to fall in love with her, or to pass beyond the condition +of friendship, and so did not measure her affection by his own. Perhaps +she would have been angry with her bridegroom’s married attorney +(<i>i. e</i>. Firmian), had he not had three or four of the best possible +excuses; to wit, his general mental resemblance to Leibgeber, and his +physiognomical resemblance to him (which his paleness purified and +refined at this juncture). +</p> + +<p> +Her yesterday’s request to Leibgeber to bring Siebenkæs with him in the +evening was now repeated (to the former’s joy), though her heart was +aching in every corner. But let none take umbrage at her half-mourning +for the Venner (now setting and near the horizon), or her erroneous +estimate of him; for we all know that women (Heaven bless them!) often +think sentiment and integrity, letters and actions, tears and honest +warm blood, to be equivalent one to another. +</p> + +<p> +In the afternoon Leibgeber took Siebenkæs to her as a sort of +syllogistic figure in support of his argument, or set of <i>rationes +decidendi</i> (for the Venner was a collection of <i>rationes dubitandi</i>). +Aquiliana received Siebenkæs with a blush, which came and went in an +instant; and then with the least dash of <i>hauteur</i> (result of +modesty!), yet with all the kindness and good-will which she owed to +his interest in her future. She lived in the English lady’s rooms. The +flowery valley lay without, like a world before its sun. One advantage +connected with a rich pleasure-garden of this sort is that a stranger +advocate finds that he can attach the floating spider-threads of his +talk to the branches of it, until they have been woven into the +finished art-work of a glittering web, which can float in the free air. +Firmian could never emulate these clever men of the world, who only +need a listener to be able to begin spinning a conversation; who, like +the tree-frogs, can cling firmly to anything they chance to hop on to, +however smooth, and polished it may be; yea, who can even keep afloat +in a space devoid of air, and all objects whatever (which a tree-frog +cannot). A man of Siebenkæs’ free and independent soul cannot, however, +long remain embarrassed by his unfamiliarity with his surroundings; he +must speedily recover his freedom by virtue of his innate superiority +to chance, external circumstances; and his unassumed and unassuming +simpleness soon amply compensates for his lack of the great world’s +artificial and assuming simplicity. +</p> + +<p> +Yesterday he had seen this Nathalie in the happy exercise and enjoyment +of all her powers, and of nature and friendship, smiling and +enchanting, and crowning the delightful evening with an act of brave +self-devotion. Alas! how little remained to-day of all these joys, so +tender and so bright. In no hour is a lovely face lovelier than at that +immediately succeeding the bitter one, when tears for the loss of a +heart have passed over it; for the sight of the loveliness in its +sorrow, during that hour itself, would be too sad to bear. For this +beautiful creature, who hid the sacrificial knife deep in her heart, +where it had been plunged, and gladly let it smart there, that but the +wound’s bleeding might be delayed, Siebenkæs would gladly have died—in +a way more serious than had been intended—could it have been of any +service to her. Is it a thing so strange that the bond between them +grew closer and stronger as the sand run down in the hourglass, when we +consider that, swayed by an unwonted three-sided seriousness (for even +Leibgeber was overtaken by this feeling), their hearts, at sight +of the gala-beauty of the spring, were filled with tender, longing +wishes?—that Siebenkæs, with his pale face, worn, and stamped with all +the traces and marks and signs of recent, bygone, trouble and pain, +shone, this day, with a soft and pleasing sheen, as of evening +sunlight, on her sight, all weakened by her tears?—that she thought +with pleasure on his (rather singular) merit of having, at all events, +embittered some of her faithless suitor’s infidelities—and that every +note he touched was in the minor mode of his tender nature, because he +was seeking to atone for, and cast into shade, the circumstance that it +had fallen to his lot to lay waste at one fell stroke so many of this +innocent, unknown creature’s hopes and joys—that even his greater +share of modest, respectful reserve, became him, and set him off by +contrast with his counterpart, the bolder and more outspoken Heinrich? +With all these charms of accidental circumstance (which win the female +world far sooner than charms of a bodily kind), Firmian was endowed in +Nathalie’s eyes. In <i>his</i> eyes she had attractions greater still, and +altogether new to him: her cultivation and acquirements; her manly +enthusiasm, her delicate refinement; her (most flattering) way of +treating <i>him</i>—(none of her sex had ever before glorified him with +anything like it, and this particular species of charm plunges many a +man who is unused to female companionship, not only into rapture, but +into matrimony),—and (two crowning delights) the facts that the whole +affair was fortuitous and out of the common, and that Lenette was the +exact antipodes of her in each and every respect. +</p> + +<p> +Alas! poor starved, hungering Firmian. There are always a gallows, and +a notice-board marked “No thoroughfare,” on the banks of the streamlet +of <i>your</i> life, even now that it has become a pearl-bearing brook. Your +marriage ring must have pinched you a good deal, and felt very tight in +a warm, temperature like this, as, indeed <i>all</i> rings feel tight in a +warm bath, and loose in a cold one. +</p> + +<p> +But either some naiad of a diabolical turn of mind, or some ocean god +who loved a jest, took always the greatest delight in perturbing and +disturbing the sea of Firmian’s life, and stirring up the sand at the +bottom of it just when its waters were sparkling and glowing +enchantingly with phosphorescent sea creatures, or some electric matter +or other, and his ship leaving a long shining wake behind her in it. +For just as the glory and the beauty of the garden outside were growing +moment by moment, and embarrassment vanishing away with equal rapidity, +the painful memory of the late bereavement fading out of remembrance; +just when the pianoforte (or, say, the pianissimo fortissimo), and the +songs, duets, and trios were being opened and got ready; in fine, just +as the honey-cells of their orangery of happiness, their permitted +flesh-pots of Egypt, and deep communion cup of love were all ready to +their lips, who came with a pop into the room but a certain bluebottle +fly on two legs, who had often flown into Firmian’s cup of joy before +now. +</p> + +<p> +The Venner, Rosa von Meyern, made his appearance on the scene, lovelily +attired in saffron silk, to pay his bride his privileged ambassadorial +visit. +</p> + +<p> +Never in all his career did this young gentleman arrive otherwise than +too soon or too late; just as he was never serious, but either +lachrymose or jocular. The three faces were now each a long duodecimo +edition of themselves; Leibgeber’s was the only one which was not +stretched on the wire-drawing press, but it was dyed a fine red by his +inborn detestation of fops and maiden-hawks of every kind. Everard had +come primed with one idea (taken from Stolberg’s ‘Homer’), which was, +to ask Nathalie, on his entrance, whether she were a goddess or a +mortal (in the manner of Homer’s heroes), since <i>he</i> could only pretend +to contend with the latter race. But at sight of the masculine pair +whom the Devil levelled at his head like a double-barrelled gun, +everything inside it turned to cheese and curd, immobile; <i>twenty</i> +kisses wouldn’t have enabled him to get his great idea a-flow again. It +was five days before he got what little there was inside the bones of +his head into such a fair way of recovery as to make shift to deliver +himself of this idea to a distant relation of my own (how else should I +have known anything about it?) in a tolerable degree of preservation. +At all times nothing so paralysed him in female society as the presence +of a man; he would have stormed an entire convent of women sooner than +have laid siege to a single couple of novices (to say nothing of a +canoness), had but a single wretched man been alongside them. +</p> + +<p> +A standing troupe of players, such as I now see before my pencil, never +performed in Fantaisie. Nathalie was lost in amazement (little polite), +and in a quiet comparison of this original edition with her epistolary +ideal. The Venner, who took for granted that the result of her +observations was just the opposite of what it really was, would have +been delighted had he had it in his power to be a manifest +contradiction, an antipodes to himself. I mean, he would fain have +shown himself both cold and angry at finding her in the society of this +couple, and also confidential and tender, so that this beggarly pair +might be filled with envy and vexation at the sight of his harvest and +vintage. And inasmuch as he was quite as greatly (only much more +agreeably) struck with, and surprised at her appearance, as she with +his, and as he had time enough before him for revenge and punishment, +he chose rather to adopt the line of bragging and vaunting with the +view of seasoning and blessing the visit of these two lawyer fellows +with a good spice of envy. Moreover, he had the advantage of them in +possessing a light horse-artillery body, and he could <i>mobilise</i> his +army of physical charms quicker than they could. Siebenkæs was +thinking of nothing nearer at hand than—his wife. Before Rosa’s +arrival he had been browsing on the idea of her as on a meadow of +bitter herbs, for the rough, chapped bark of the conjugal hand was by +no means capable of touching his self-love with the delicate, etherial, +gentle, <i>snail-antennæ</i> touch of this unmated beauty’s eiderdown +fingers. But now the idea of Lenette became a pasture of sweet and +succulent verdure; for his jealousy of Rosa (domiciled in two different +quarters) was less awakened by Lenette’s behaviour to him than by +Nathalie’s relations with him. The grimness of Heinrich’s glances +increased amain; they wandered up and down over Rosa’s summer hare-skin +of yellow silk with a jaundiced glare. In an irritable impulse to be +doing something or other, he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and got +hold of the profile of Herr von Blaise which he had clipped out (as we +may remember) on the occasion when he stamped the glass wig to pieces +(and with respect to which profile the only thing which had been +distressing him for a twelvemonth past was that it was in his pocket, +and not affixed to the gallows, where he could have stuck it with a +hairpin the evening he went away). He pulled it out, and tousling it +between his fingers, he glided nimbly backwards and forwards between +Nathalie and Rosa, murmuring to Siebenkæs (with his eyes fixed on the +Venner), “À la silhouette.”<a name="div2Ref_64" href="#div2_64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Everard’s self-love divined these flattering (and involuntary) +sacrifices of the self-love of the other two, and he went on firing off +at the embarrassed girl (with ever-growing superciliousness, directed +to Siebenkæs’s address) fragments from the story of his travels, +messages from his friends, and questions concerning the arrival of his +letters. The brethren, Siebenkæs and Leibgeber, sounded a retreat, but +did so like true males; for they were the least bit annoyed with poor, +innocent Nathalie, just as though she could have marched up to this +sponsus and letter bridegroom of hers the moment he came into the room, +with a salutation such as, “Sir, you can never be lord of mine, even +were you nothing worse than a scoundrel, idiot, fright, prig, +man-milliner,” &c. But must we not, all of us (for I don’t consider +myself an exception), smite upon our bony, sinful breasts, and confess +that we spit fire the moment modest girls refrain from spitting it +instantly at those whom we may have nigrified or excommunicated in +their presence; that further we insist upon their discarding wicked +squires instantaneously, although they may not be in such a hurry to +receive them that they should care as little what forced marches and +honourable retreats their cottiers and dependents may have to make, as +we fief-holders do ourselves; and that we are offended with them when +they have an innocent opportunity of being false; even when they do not +avail themselves of it? May Heaven improve the class of persons of whom +I have just been treating. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian and Heinrich roamed for an hour or two about the enchanted +valley; it was full of magic flutes, magic zithers, and magic mirrors. +But they had neither ears nor eyes. What they found to say concerning +events heated their heads to the temperature of balloon furnaces, and +Leibgeber blew a fanfare of mere satiric insults out of the reverse end +of Fame’s trumpet at every female Bayreuthian he met taking her evening +walk. He announced it as his opinion that women were the unsafest ships +in winch a man could embark on the great open ocean of life—slaveships +in fact, or bucentaurs (or shuttles<a name="div2Ref_65" href="#div2_65"><sup>[65]</sup></a> which the Devil weaves his nets +and gins with)—and the more so that, like other ships of war, they are +so often and so scrupulously washed, sheathed on the outside with +poisonous copper, and have about the same amount of bunting and tarry +tackle (ribbons) flying about them. Heinrich had gone to Nathalie’s, +indulging the (highly improbable) anticipation that she would at once +unhesitatingly accept and act upon his friend’s deposition of evidence +in his capacity of an eye- and ear-witness concerning Rosa’s canonical +<i>impedimenta</i> (or ecclesiastical marriage disabilities), and it was his +disappointment on this score which was so gnawing upon his mind. +</p> + +<p> +But just as Firmian was discussing and expatiating upon the Venner’s +lisping and indistinct mode of speaking (his words seemed to curl about +the top of his tongue with no power of expression in them), Heinrich +cried out, “Hallo! there the dirt-fly goes!” It was the Venner, +floundering as a pike does in the net he has been brought to market in. +As the woodpecker (naturalists call most gaudy-plumaged birds +woodpeckers) winged his flight closer by them, they saw, as he passed +them, that his face was a-glow with anger. Doubtless the cement which +had attached him to Nathalie was broken and dissolved. +</p> + +<p> +The two friends waited a little while longer in the shady walk, hoping +that they might meet her; but at length they made their way back to +town, meeting, as they went, a maid of hers, who was taking the +following letter to Leibgeber:— +</p> + +<p> +“You and your friend were, alas! quite right, and all is now at an end. +Please to let me rest, and reflect for a time in solitude over the +ruins of my little future. When people’s lips are wounded and stitched, +they are not allowed to talk, although it is not my lips but my heart +that bleeds, and that for your sex. Ah! I blush when I think of all the +letters I have written, which it has been such happiness to me to +write—and, alas! under such a delusion!—yet I have no real reason to +do so after all. You have yourself said that innocent pleasures should +give us as little cause to be ashamed as blackberries, although, when +the enjoyment is past, there may be a black stain on the lips. But, at +all events, I thank you from my heart. As I must have been disenchanted +one day, it was kind that it was not done by the wicked sorcerer +himself, but by you and your most honest and truthful friend, to whom +please to offer my very kind regards and remembrances. +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:60%">“Yours, +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:65%">“A. Nathalie.” +</p> + +<p> +Heinrich had expected the letter to be one of invitation, “for” (said +he) “her empty heart must feel a cold void, like a finger with its nail +cut too short.” Firmian, whom matrimony had taught, and furnished with +barometer scales and meteorological tables for observance of women, +knew enough to be of opinion that a woman must, in the very hour when +she had dismissed one lover (on purely moral grounds) be a little +over-cool towards the person who has persuaded her thereto, even were +he her <i>second</i> lover. And (I take leave here to add, myself) for the +very same reasons she will exceed in warmth towards this second +immediately afterwards. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! poor Nathalie!” Firmian wished unceasingly “May the flowers and +blossoms be court-plaister for the wounds of your heart; may the soft +æther of spring be a milk-cure for your oppressed panting bosom.” It +seemed unspeakably sad to him that an innocent creature like this +should be thus tried and punished, as though she were guilty, and be +compelled to draw the purifying air of her life from poison plants, and +not from wholesome ones. +</p> + +<p> +The next day all Siebenkæs did was to write a letter (in which he +signed himself Leibgeber), informing the Count von Vaduz that he was +unwell and as grey and yellow as a Swiss cheese. Heinrich had left him +no peace until he did this. “The count,” said he, “is accustomed, in my +person, to a fine, blooming, sturdy Inspector; but, if he is properly +prepared for the thing by a letter, he will really believe you to be +me. Luckily we are neither of us men who would be asked to unbutton in +any custom-house; nobody would fancy there was anything inside <i>our</i> +waistcoats but skin and bone.”<a name="div2Ref_66" href="#div2_66"><sup>[66]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +On the Thursday Siebenkæs, standing at the hotel-door, saw the Venner, +in an Electoral habit, with a full-dress parade head, and a whole +Barth’s vineyard in his face, driving to the Hermitage between two +young ladies. When he carried this news upstairs, Leibgeber swore—(and +also cursed)—to the effect that the scoundrel wasn’t worthy of the +society of any young lady, unless her head was a Golgotha and her heart +a <i>gorge</i> (or <i>cul</i>) <i>de Paris</i>. He was quite bent on going to +see +Nathalie then and there, and telling her the news, but Firmian +prevented him by main force. +</p> + +<p> +On the Friday she herself wrote to Heinrich as follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“I have mustered up courage to revoke my prohibition, and beg that you +and your friend will come to-morrow to beautiful Fantaisie, when (it +being Saturday) it will lie depopulated. I keep my arms about Nature +and Friendship; there is no room in them for anything besides. Do you +know, I dreamt last night that I saw you both in one coffin there was a +white butterfly fluttering above you, and it grew larger and larger +till its wings were like great white shrouds; and then it covered you +both over and hid you with them, and there was no motion beneath. My +dear, dear friend arrives the day after to-morrow—and to-morrow, +<i>you</i>. And then, I must bid you all adieu. +</p> + +<p class="right">“N. A.” +</p> + +<p> +The Saturday in question occupies the whole of the next chapter, and I +can form some sort of idea of the reader’s eagerness to be at it from +<i>my own</i>; and all the better, seeing that <i>I</i> have read (to say +nothing +about writing) the said chapter already, which he has not. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<p class="center">A LOVER’S DISMISSAL—FANTAISIE—THE CHILD WITH THE BOUQUET—THE +EDEN OF THE NIGHT, AND THE ANGEL AT THE GATE OF PARADISE. +</p> + +<p> +It was not the deeper blue of the sky (which, on the Saturday, was as +rich and pure as in winter, or by night)—nor the thought of actually +standing in the very presence of the sorrowing soul whom he had driven +from Paradise with the Sodom apple of the serpent (Venner)—nor his own +feeble health—nor memories of his own domestic life;—it was none of +these matters taken singly, but the combination of all these semitones +and minor intervals together which attuned our Firmian to a melting +<i>maestoso</i>, and gave to his looks and thoughts (for his afternoon +visit) much such a kind and degree of tenderness as he expected he +should find in Nathalie’s. +</p> + +<p> +What he did find was precisely the reverse. In and about Nathalie there +reigned such a noble <i>cold</i>, serene gladsomeness as you may find upon +the loftiest mountain peaks; the cloud and the storm are <i>beneath</i>, +while around there rests a purer, colder air, but a deeper blue, too, +and a paler sunlight. +</p> + +<p> +It cannot, of course, surprise me that you are on the tenter-hooks of +anxiety to hear the account she is going to give of her rupture with +Everard. But her account of it was so brief—it might have been +written round a Prussian dollar—so that I must supplement it with +mine, which I have taken from Rosa’s own written record of it. The fact +is, the Venner, five years afterwards, wrote a very passable novel (if +we may credit the praise bestowed upon it in the ‘Universal German +Library’), into which he artfully built the whole of the rupture with +Nathalie—(that severance between soul and body); at all events, this +is the conclusion to which sundry hints of Nathalie’s would point us. +The said novel, accordingly, is my fountain of Vaucluse. Emasculate +intelligences, such as Rosa’s, can only reproduce <i>experiences</i>; their +poetic <i>fœtuses</i> are nothing but adopted children of the actual. +</p> + +<p> +To be brief, what took place was as follows. Scarce were Firmian and +Heinrich gone out among the trees, when the Venner brought up his +reserve of vengeance, and asked Nathalie, in a tetchy manner, how it +was that she could tolerate visitors of such a poor and plebeian sort. +The haste and the coldness of the departed pair had already set +Nathalie on fire, and this address made her blaze forth in a flame upon +her yellow-silken questioner. “A question such as that,” she answered, +“is very little short of an insult;” and she immediately added one of +her own—for she was too warm and too proud to dissemble in the +slightest, or to hold other than the straightest course with him. “You +call at Mr. Siebenkæs’s pretty often yourself, do you not?” “Oh!” said +this empty braggart, “I call on his <i>wife</i> (to speak the simple truth); +<i>he</i> is merely my pretext.” “Really,” said she, making her syllables +last as long as her look of scorn. Meyern, amazed at this behaviour, so +very unlike the tone of the antecedent epistolary correspondence (he +gave the twin cronies the credit of it)—Meyern, whom her beauty, his +own money, and her poverty and dependence upon Blaise (to say nothing +of his position of betrothed bridegroom), had now inspired with the +utmost audacity—Meyern, this brave and courageous lion, undertook, +without a moment’s hesitation, a task which nobody else would have +ventured upon, namely, that of humiliating and bringing to her proper +senses this irate Aphrodite, by reading to her the catalogue of his +Cicisbean appointments, and, in general terms, unfolding before her the +long perspective of the hundreds of gynæcœa and jointure-houses open +to him. “It is such an easy matter to worship false goddesses and open +their temple doors, that I am charmed to be restored to the worship of +the true feminine godhead, through my Babylonish captivity to you.” +</p> + +<p> +All her crushed heart sighed forth, “Ah! then it is all true—he is a +wicked wretch, and I am miserable indeed.” But she kept silence, +outwardly, and went and looked out of the window, in anger. Her soul +was one of those whose seats are the knight’s upper dais of womankind; +it was ever eager to do rare, heroic acts of self-devotion and +self-sacrifice; indeed, a fondness for remarkable and out-of-the-way +greatness was the only littleness about it. And now, when the Venner +tried to make amends for his braggadocio by a sudden jump into a light +and sportive tone (a tone which, in minor warfares with the ordinary +fair sex, heals breaches much quicker and better than a more serious +one)—and proposed a walk in the pretty park to her, as being a spot +better adapted for a reconciliation—this noble soul of hers spread +wide its pure white pinions and soared away from out the foul heart of +this crooked pike with his silver scales for ever! And she drew near to +him and said (all a-glow, but dry-eyed wholly), “Mr. von Meyern, I have +quite decided—we are parted for ever. We have never known each other, +and our acquaintance is at an end. I will send you back your letters +to-morrow, and you will have the goodness to return mine to me.” Had he +employed a more serious tone, he might have kept hold of this strong +soul for some days—perhaps weeks—longer. Without looking at him +anymore, she opened a casket and began arranging letters. He tried, in +a hundred speeches, to flatter and pacify her; she answered never a +word. His heart boiled within him, for he gave the two advocates the +blame for all this. At length he thought he would humble this deaf mute +(as well as make her alter her determination), by saying, as he now +did, “I don’t know what your uncle in Kuhschnappel will say to all +this. <i>He</i> appears to me to set a much greater value upon my sentiments +towards you than you do yourself; indeed, he seems to consider our +marriage as essential to your happiness as I think it to mine.” This +was a burden heavier than her back, so sore bent down by Fate, could +bear. She shut up the casket hurriedly, sat down, and rested her +bewildered head upon her trembling arms, shedding burning tears, which +her hands strove in vain to hide. A reproach of our poverty uttered by +lips we have loved, darts like red-hot iron into the heart, and +scorches it dry with fire. Rosa, whose vengeance, now wreaked, gave +place to the most eager love, (in hopes that her feelings were of the +same selfish type as his own), threw himself on his knees before her, +crying, “Oh! forget it all! What are we breaking with one another +<i>for</i>, if we come really to think about it? Your precious tear-drops +wash it all away. I mingle mine with them in rich abundance.” +</p> + +<p> +She arose with haughty port, leaving him on his knees. “My tears,” she +said, “have not the smallest reference to anything connected with you. +I <i>am</i> poor, and I would not be rich. After the base, ignoble insult +you have put upon me, you shall not stay and see me weep. Have the +goodness to leave the room.” So that he retired; and—when one +considers the weight of the sacks he had to carry—sacks of every kind +(including one full of muzzles)—he really did it in a surprisingly +brisk and lively manner, holding his head pretty high. His command of +his temper and his apparent good humour strike one the more (for I may +give him what praise he deserves), that he retained them and took them +home with him, and this on an afternoon when, with the two finest and +longest levers in all his collection he had utterly failed in touching +the smallest point in Nathalie’s heart, or the auricles thereof. One of +these levers was his old one, which he had tried upon Lenette—that of +gradually twisting himself in, corkscrew fashion, in spiral serpentine +lines of petty advances, approaches, attentions and illusions; but +Nathalie was neither weak nor light enough to be penetrated thus. The +other lever was one from which something might really have <i>been</i> +expected in the way of effect—though it actually <i>had</i> less than even +the first. It consisted in showing his old scars (like an old warrior), +and rejuvenating them into wounds; in this manner he bared his +suffering heart, pierced by so many a false love, and which (like a +dollar with a hole in it), had hung as a votive offering upon so many a +shrine. His soul put on Court mourning (of sorrow) of all degrees, +whole and half, in hopes of being, like a widow, more enchanting in +black. The friend of a Leibgeber, however, could be softened by manly +sorrows only—the womanly sort could but harden her. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile (as we have said), he left, his <i>fiancée</i> without any pity +for her self-sacrifice indeed, and equally without the slightest +indignation at her refusal of him. He merely thought, “She may go to +the devil;” and he could scarce sufficiently congratulate himself that +he had so easily escaped the incalculable annoyance of having to endure +life with a creature of the kind from one year’s end to another, and to +pay her the necessary respect throughout an infernal, long matrimonial +life. On the other hand, his bile was mightily stirred against +Leibgeber, but more particularly against Siebenkæs (whom he suspected +of being the real judge of his Divorce Court), and he laid the +foundation of several gall-stones in his gall-bladder, and of a slight +bilious yellow tint in his eyes, with hating the advocate, which he +could not do enough. +</p> + +<p> +We return to the Saturday. Nathalie derived her calmness and serenity +partly from her own strength of mind, but also in good measure from the +pair of horses (and of rose maidens) with whom Rosa had been seen +driving to the Hermitage. A woman’s jealousy is always a day or two +older than her love. Moreover, I know of no excellence, no weakness, +shortcoming, virtue, womanliness, <i>manliness</i>, in a woman which does +not tend rather to enkindle than to appease jealousy. +</p> + +<p> +Not only Siebenkæs, but even Leibgeber (anxious to breathe some warmth +upon her freezing soul, all stripped of its warm plumage), was this +afternoon serious and cordial, not (as he usually did) dressing his +rewards and punishments up in irony. Perhaps, too, her gratifying (and +flattering) readiness to obey him tamed him down to some extent. +Firmian had, in addition to the reasons above set forth, the more +powerful ones—that the English lady was expected home the next day but +one, and her coming would put a stop to all this garden pleasure, or +interfere with it at all events—that he who knew well, from his own +experience, what the wounds of a lost love were, had a boundless +compassion for hers, and would gladly have given his own heart’s blood +to make up for the loss of hers—moreover, accustomed all his life to +bare, mean and empty rooms, he felt a keen enjoyment in being in the +richly-furnished, bright and tasteful chamber he was now in, and +naturally carried over a portion of this to the account of their +inhabitant and hermit. +</p> + +<p> +The maid-servant, whom we have seen this week already, came in just +then, with tears in her eyes, faltering out that she was going to +confession, and hoped she had done nothing to displease her, &c., &c. +“Anything to displease me?” cried Nathalie; “most certainly not—and I +know I can say the same in your mistress’s name;” and went out of the +room with her and kissed her, unseen, like some good genius. How +beautiful are pity and kindness to distress, in a soul which has just +risen up in might to resist oppression. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber took a volume of ‘Tristram Shandy’ from the English lady’s +library, and lay down with it on the lawn under the nearest tree, with +the view of making over to his friend the undivided fruition of this +anise, marchpane and honeycomb of an afternoon of talk, which to him +was merely so much every-day household fare. Moreover, all that day +when he made any sign of jesting, Nathalie’s eyes would implore him, +“Please do not, for just this one day. Do not take pains to point out +every pock-pit which Fate has left upon my inner soul to him—spare me +for this once.” And lastly (which was his principal reason), it would +be much easier for Firmian to tell this sensitive Nathalie (now upon +one-eighth pay) all his project of making her his appanaged widow, his +heiress in jest—to tell it to her wrapped in a triple shroud, written +in distorted characters. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs looked upon this undertaking as a sort of day’s work at +fortification making, a journey across the Alps—round the globe—into +the grotto of Antiparos, a discovery of the longitude; he had not the +slightest notion how even to <i>begin</i> to set about it. Indeed, he had +previously told Leibgeber that, if his death were but a real one, +nobody would be more ready to talk to her about it, but that for a sham +death, he really could not sadden her; so that she would have to +consent, altogether by some chance, and unconditionally, to become his +widow. “And is my death a thing so very improbable after all?” he said. +“Of course it is,” answered Leibgeber. “If it were not, what would +become of our death in jest. The lady will e’en have to make the best +of it.” It would appear that he dealt with women’s hearts in a fashion +somewhat colder and harder than Siebenkæs, in whose opinion (hermit +connoisseur as he was of rarities in the shape of strong female souls) +a delicate, suffering one like this could not be too tenderly treated. +However, I do not set up to judge between the two friends. +</p> + +<p> +When Leibgeber had gone out with Yorick, Siebenkæs went and stood +before a fresco representing the said Yorick, and poor Maria with her +flute and her goat. For the chambers of the great are picture-bibles, +and an <i>orbis pictus</i>,—they sit, eat and walk in picture exhibitions, +which makes it all the harder a matter for them that two, at least, of +the greatest expanses in nature—the sky and the sea—cannot be painted +over for them. Nathalie went up to him, and at once cried out, “What is +there to see in that to-day? Away from it!” She was just as open and +unconstrained in her manner with him as he could not manage to be with +her. She displayed the warmth and beauty of her soul in that wherein we +(unconsciously) un<i>veil</i>, or un<i>mask</i> (as the case may be), ourselves +more completely than in anything—namely, her mode of bestowing praise. +The illuminated triumphal arch which she erected over the head of her +English lady-friend, elevated her own soul so that she stood at that +gate of honour as conqueror, in laurel wreath, and glittering collar of +the Order of Goodness and Worth. Her praises were the double chorus and +echo of the other’s excellence; she was so warm and so earnest! Ah! +maidens, fairer are ye a thousand times when ye twine bridal-wreaths +and laurel garlands for your companions than when ye plait them crowns +of straw, and bend them collars of iron. +</p> + +<p> +She told him how fond she was of British men and women, both in and out +of print, although she had never seen any until the previous winter. +“Unless,” she said, with a smile, “our friend outside may be considered +one.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber, out on his grass mattress, raised his head and saw the +couple looking down at him with faces of regard; and the shimmer of +love shone forth in three pairs of eyes. One single moment of time thus +clasped three sister souls together in one tender embrace. +</p> + +<p> +The maid coming back from confession about this juncture in her white +dress—(’twas heavy-wing <i>cases</i> rather than light butterfly wings to +her)—with a trifle of pretty-tinted ribbon about it here and there; +Firmian looked at this absolved one for a minute or two, and then took +up her black and gold hymn-book, which she had laid down in her haste, +finding inside it a whole pattern-card of silks, besides peacock’s +feathers. Nathalie, who saw a satirical expression dawning on his face, +drove it away in an instant. “Your sex attaches just as much value to +adornment as ours. Look at your Court dresses, the Coronation robes at +Frankfort, and uniforms and official costumes of all kinds. Then, the +peacock was the bird of the old knights and poets, and if you make vows +upon his feathers, or wear garlands of them, <i>we</i> may surely wear them, +or at all events <i>mark</i> (if not reward) songs with them.” Every now and +then a barely polite expression of astonishment at what she knew +escaped the advocate in spite of himself. He turned over the leaves of +the festival hymns, and came upon gilt figures of Our Lady, and found a +picture wherein were two parti-coloured blotches (supposed to represent +two lovers), and a phosphorescent heart, which the male blotch was +offering to the female with the words: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“And is to thee my fond love all unknown!<br/> +How my heart burns is here full plainly shown” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +—the whole surrounded by a tracery of leafwork. Firmian loved family +and society miniature pictures when (as in this case) they were +exceedingly poor as works of art. Nathalie saw and read this; she took +the book in haste, snapped the clasp to, and then, when she had done +so, said, “You have no objection, have you?” +</p> + +<p> +Courage towards women is not inborn, but acquired. Firmian had had +familiar experience of very few; wherefore this natural awe made him +look upon every feminine body—particularly if of any standing in +society—as a kind of sacred Ark of the Covenant whereon no finger +might be laid; (for though it is proper to rise superior to +considerations of rank where men are concerned, it is otherwise with +women), and upon every female foot as that on which a Queen of Spain +stands, and every female finger as a Franklin point emitting electric +sparks. If in love with him, I might have likened her to an electrified +person, <i>feeling</i> all the sparks and mock pains she emitted. At the +same time, nothing could be more natural than that his reverent +timidity should diminish as time went on, and that at length, (at a +moment when she was looking the other way) he should take courage to +deftly snatch hold of the end of one of the ribbons in her hair between +his fingers—and she never be aware of it. It may have been by way of +preliminary studies towards the execution of this feat that he had +previously once or twice tried the effect of taking up into his hands +things which had been a good deal in hers—such as her English +scissors, a broken pincushion, and a pencil-case. +</p> + +<p> +Taking heart of grace hereupon, he thought he would venture to take up +a bunch of wax grapes (which he imagined to be made of stone, like +those upon butter-boats). He gripped them, accordingly, in his fist as +in a wine-press, crushed two or three of them to pieces, and then +proffered as many petitions for mercy and pardon as if he had knocked +over and broken the porcelain Pagoda of Nanking. “There’s no harm +done,” she said, laughing. “We all find plenty such berries in +life—with fine ripe skins—no intoxicating juice—and as easily +broken—or easier.” +</p> + +<p> +He was in terrible dread lest this glorious, many-tinted rainbow of +happiness of his should melt away into evening dew, and it disconcerted +him that he no longer saw Leibgeber reading upon the flowery turf. +Outside, the world was brightened into a land of the sun—every tree +was a rich, firm-rooted joy-flower—the valley a condensed universe, +ringing with music of the spheres. Nevertheless he had not the courage +to proffer his arm to this Venus for a stroll through the sun, <i>i. e</i>. +the sunny Fantaisie; the Venner’s fate, and the fact that there was a +late harvest of a few visitors still walking about the gardens, +rendered him bashful and mute. Of a sudden Leibgeber knocked at the +window with the agate-head of his stick, crying, “Come over to dinner. +My stick-head is the Vienna lantern.<a name="div2Ref_67" href="#div2_67"><sup>[67]</sup></a> We are sure not to get home +before midnight.” He had ordered a dinner in the café. Presently he +cried out, “There is a pretty child here asking for you.” Siebenkæs +hurried out, and found it was the very child into whose hand he had +pressed his flowers on the evening when, after the great feast-eve at +the Hermitage, he had been soaring along on the wings of fancy through +the village of Johannis. “Where is your wife, sir?” asked the child; +“the lady who took me out of the water the day before yesterday? I have +some beautiful flowers here that my godpapa sent me to give her. Mother +will come and give her best thanks, too, as soon as she can, but just +now she’s in bed very unwell.” +</p> + +<p> +Nathalie, who had heard what the child said, came down, and said, with +a blush, “Is it I, darling? Give me your flowers, then.” The child, +recognising her, kissed her hand, the hem of her dress, and, lastly, +her lips, and would have recommenced this round of kisses, when +Nathalie, in turning the flowers over, came upon three silken +counterfeits amidst its living forget-me-nots and red and white roses. +To Nathalie’s questions as to whence these costly flowers came, the +child answered, “Give me a kreuzer or two, and I’ll tell you.” This was +done, and she added, “I got them from my godpapa, and he is a very, +very grand gentleman;” then ran away among the bushes. +</p> + +<p> +This bouquet was a veritable Turkish Selam-and-Flower riddle to them +all. Leibgeber accounted with ease for the child’s sudden marriage of +Nathalie and Siebenkæs, by the circumstance that the advocate had been +standing beside her at the water-side, and people, who had seen no one +so constantly with her as himself, had been misled by the bodily +likeness between them. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs’s mind, however, ran more on the machine-master, Rosa (so +fond of setting his patchwork life-scenes for every woman to play her +part before), and the resemblance these silk flowers bare to those +which the Venner had once redeemed from pawn for Lenette in +Kuhschnappel struck him at once; yet how could he sadden this gladsome +time, and spoil the pleasure of receiving these votive flowers, by +giving words to his suspicions? Nathalie insisted upon a distribution +of this floral inheritance, inasmuch as each of the three had taken +part in the rescue, and Siebenkæs and Leibgeber had, at all events, +rescued the rescuer. She kept the white silk roses for herself, +allotted the red ones to Leibgeber (who would not have them, but asked +for a proper, real, living rose instead, which he immediately put in +his mouth); to Siebenkæs she gave the silken forget-me-nots, and one or +two living, perfume-breathing ones as well (souls, as it were, of the +artificial ones). He took them with rapture, and said the tender real +ones should never wither for him. Nathalie here took a brief temporary +leave of the pair, but Firmian could not find words to express all his +gratitude to his friend for the means he had adopted to prolong this +little day of grace which orbed his whole life round with a new heaven +and a new earth. +</p> + +<p> +No King of Spain ever took as little out of some six, or so (at the +outside), of the hundred dishes which, by the laws of the realm, are +daily served at his table, than Siebenkæs did that day out of one. +Historians, worthy of credence, inform us, however, that he managed to +drink a very little—a little wine it was—and that in a considerable +hurry for he could not be happy enough that day to satisfy Leibgeber. +The latter, not apt to be easily swayed by heart and feeling, was all +the more delighted that his beloved Firmian should at last have a pole +star of happiness shining in the zenith point of the heavens above his +head, beaming down genial warmth upon the blossoming time of his few +scattered flowers. +</p> + +<p> +The rapid rate at which his duplex enjoyment kept on moving enabled him +to steal a march upon the sun, and he arrived once more at the villa, +whose walls were now tinted red by his beams, while the glory of +evening was gilding its windows into fire. Nathalie, on the balcony, +was like some sunlit soul, just ready to take wing after the departing +sun, hanging with her great eyes upon the shining, quivering world +rotunda all full of church-music—and on the sun flying downward from +this temple, like some angel—and at the holy, luminous tomb of night +into which earth was sinking. +</p> + +<p> +When they came under the balcony (Nathalie beckoning them to come up to +her) Heinrich handed him his stick, saying, “Keep that for me. I have +enough to carry without it—if you want me, blow the whistle.” As +regarded his <i>morale</i> and physique, our good Henry had the kindest and +softest of human hearts within his shaggy, Bruin breast. +</p> + +<p> +Ah! happy Firmian, happy in spite of all your troubles. When now you +pass through the door of glass and on to the floor of iron, the sun +confronts you, and sets for a second time. Earth closes her great eye, +like some dying goddess! Then the hills smoke like altars—choruses +call from the woods—shadows, the veils of day, float about the +enkindled, translucent tree-tops and rest upon their many-tinted +breast-pins (of flowers), and the gold-leaf of the evening sky throws a +dead-gilt gleam towards the east, and touches with a rosy ray the +vibrating breast of the hovering lark, far up evening bell of Nature. +Ah! happy Firmian, should some glorious spirit from realms afar wing +its flight athwart earth and her spring tide, and, as he passes, a +thousand lovely evenings be concentrated into one burning one—it would +not be more Elysian than this, whereof the glow is now dying out around +you as the moments fly. +</p> + +<p> +When the flames of the windows paled, and the moon was rising heavily +behind the earth, they both went back into the twilight room, silent, +and with full hearts. Firmian opened the pianoforte and, in music, went +through his evening once more. The trembling strings were as tongues of +fire to his full heart; the flower-ashes of his youth were blown away, +and two or three youthful minutes bloomed back into life. +</p> + +<p> +But as the music poured its warm life-balsam upon Nathalie’s swollen +heart in all its constraint (for its wounds were only closed, not +healed), it melted and gave way, the heavy tears which had been burning +within it flowed forth, and it grew weak and tender, but light. +Firmian, who saw she was passing once more through the gate of +sacrifice towards the sacrificial knife, stopped the sacrificial music, +and tried to lead her away from the altar. Just then the first beam of +the moon alighted, like a swan’s wing, upon the waxen grapes. He asked +her to come out into the silent, misty, after-summer of the day, the +moonlit evening. She placed her arm in his without saying yes. +</p> + +<p> +What a sparkling, gleaming world! Through the branches, through the +fountains, over the hills and over the woodlands, the flashing molten +silver was flowing, which the moon was fining from out the dross of +night. Swiftly shot her glance of silver athwart the rippling wavelet, +and the glossy, shining, gently-trembling apple-leaves, pausing to rest +upon the marble pillars and birch-tree stems. Nathalie and Firmian +paused upon the threshold of the magic valley (it gleamed like some +enchanted cavern, where night and light were playing, and all the +founts of being—which by day cast up sweet odour, melody of songs and +voices, feathery wings, translucent pinions—seemed sunk in voiceless +slumber deep into some silent chasm). They looked up to the mountain, +the Sophienberg, with its summit flattened as by the weight of years; a +great mist Colossus was veiling all its Alp-like peak; next at the +pale-green world, lying asleep beneath the shimmering radiance of the +far-off silent suns, gleaming depths of silver star-dust, flowing faint +and far before the ever-brightening rising moon; and then at one +another, with hearts full to the brim of holy friendship, such a gaze +as only two blest angels, new created, free and gladsome, bend in +rapture on each other. “Are you as happy as I?” he asked. “No,” she +answered, involuntarily pressing his arm, “that I am not; for, on a +night like this should follow, not a day, but something far lovelier +and richer—something that should satisfy the heart’s thirst, and +staunch its bleeding for ever.” “And what should that be?” he asked. +“Death,” was her answer. She lifted her streaming eyes to his and said, +“You think so, too, do you not? Death for <i>me</i>.” “No, no,” he added +quickly, “for <i>me</i>, if you will, not for <i>you</i>.” To break the course +of +this overpowering moment, she added hurriedly, “Shall we go down to the +place where we first met, and where, two days too soon, I became your +friend;<a name="div2Ref_68" href="#div2_68"><sup>[68]</sup></a> and yet it was not too soon. Shall we?” +</p> + +<p> +He obeyed her; but his soul was still a-swim among his precious +thoughts, and as they went down the long, hollow, gravel-way, besprent +with the shadows of the shrubs, and moonlight rippling over its white +bed (flecked with shadows for stones), he said, “Yes, in an hour like +this, when death and sleep send forth their brothers to us, a soul like +yours may think of death.<a name="div2Ref_69" href="#div2_69"><sup>[69]</sup></a> But I have more cause than you, for I am +happier. Oh! of all guests at Joy’s festival-banquet, Death is the one +whom she loves best to see; for he is himself a joy, the last and +highest rapture upon earth. None but the common herd can associate +humanity’s lofty flight of migration into the distant land of spring +with ghosts and corpses here below on earth; as when they hear the +owls’ voices when they are going away to warmer countries they take +them for the cries of goblins. But, oh! dear, dear, Nathalie, I cannot +and will not bear to think of what you say as in any shape connected +with <i>you</i>. No, no, so rich a soul must come into full bloom in a far +nearer, earlier spring than that beyond this life! Oh, God! it <i>must</i>!” +They had reached a wall of rock over which a broad cascade of moonlight +was falling; against it leant a trellis of roses, whence Natalie +gathered a spray, all green and tender, with two young rose-buds just +beginning to swell, and, saying “You will never blow,” she placed it on +her heart, and said (looking at him with a strange expression), “While +they are young they scarcely prick at all.” +</p> + +<p> +And when they got down to the stone water-basin—the sacred spot where +they first met—and could as yet find no words to utter what was in +their hearts, they saw some one come up out of the dry basin. Though +they smiled, it was a smile full of emotion—in all three cases—for +this was their Leibgeber, who had been lying in wait for them in +hiding, with a bottle of wine, among the imaged water-gods. A certain +something there had been in his troubled eyes, but it had been poured +out by way of libation to this spring night from our cup of joy. “This +port and haven of your first landing here,” said he, “must be properly +consecrated, and <i>you</i> (to Nathalie) must join in the pledge. I swear +by Heaven that there is more fruit hanging on its blue dome to-night +within reach than ever hung on any green one.” They took three glasses, +pledged one another, and said (some of them, I imagine, in somewhat +subdued tones). “To friendship! may it live for ever! may the spot +where it commenced be always green! May every place blossom where it +has grown, and, though all its flowers may fade, and its leaves fall +and wither, may it live on for ever and for evermore!” Nathalie was +obliged to turn her eyes away. Heinrich laid a hand upon the agate head +of his stick (but only because his friend’s hand which was holding it +was over the top of it, that he might give the latter a warm and hearty +pressure), and said, “Give it me; you shall have no clouds in your hand +to-night;” for nature had graven cloud-streaks on the agate in her +subterranean studio. Any heart—not Nathalie’s only—must have been +touched by this bashful cloaking of the warm token of friendship. “Are +you not going to stay with us?” she asked somewhat faintly, as he was +leaving them. “I’m going up to the landlord,” he said, “to see if I can +get hold of a flute or a horn, and if I do I shall come out and +musicise over the valley, and play the springtime in.” +</p> + +<p> +When he was gone his friend felt as if his youth had gone with +him. Suddenly he saw, high above the whirling may-beetles and the +breeze-born night-butterflies, and their arrow-swift pursuers, the +bats, a great train of birds of passage winging their way through the +blue, like some broken cloud, coming back to our spring. Then flashed +upon his open heart the memory of his lodgings in the market-town, and +the time when he saw a similar flight of (earlier) birds of passage, +and thought that his life would soon be at an end. These recollections, +with all their tears, brought back the belief that he was soon to die; +and this he must tell Nathalie. He saw the wide expanse of night +stretched over the world like some great corpse but her shadowy limbs +quiver under the moonlit-branches at the first touches of the morning +breeze awaking in the east. She rises towards the coming sun as a +dissolving vapour, an all-embracing cloud, and man says “It is day.” +Two crape-covered thoughts, like hideous spectres, fought within +Firmian’s soul. The one said, “He is going to die of apoplexy, so he +never can see her more.” And the other said, “He is going through the +farce of a pretended death, and then he never <i>must</i> see her more.” +Overborne by the past as well as by the present, he took Nathalie’s +hand, and said, “You must pardon my being so deeply moved to-night. I +shall never see you more. You are the noblest of your sex that I have +ever met, but we shall never meet again. Very soon you must hear that I +am dead, or that my <i>name</i>, from one cause or other has passed away, +but my <i>heart</i> will still be yours, be <i>thine</i>. Oh! that the present, +with its mountain-chains of grave-hillocks, but lay behind me, and the +future were come, with all its open graves, and I stood on the brink of +my own! For I would look once more on <i>thee</i>, then throw myself into it +in bliss.” +</p> + +<p> +Nathalie answered not a word. She faltered suddenly in her walk, her +arm trembled, her breath came thick and fast. She stopped, and, with a +face as pale as death, said, in trembling accents, “Stay here on this +spot; let me sit alone for a minute on that turf-bank. Ah! I am so +headlong!” He saw her move trembling away. She sank, as if overwhelmed +with some burden, down upon a bank of turf. She fixed her blinded eyes +upon the moon (the blue sky around it seemed a night, the earth a +vapour); her arm lay rigid on her lap; she did not move, except that a +spasm, distantly resembling a smile, played about her lip; her eyes +were tearless. But to her friend, life at that moment seemed a realm of +shadows, whose outlines were floating and blending in endless changes +of confusion; a tract all hollow, sunken mine-shafts full of mists in +the likeness of mountain-spirits, with but <i>one</i> single opening of +outlet to the heavens, the free air, the spring, the light of day; and +<i>that</i> outlet so narrow, so remote, and far above his head. +</p> + +<p> +There sat Nathalie in the white crystal shimmer, like some angel upon +an infant’s grave; and, suddenly, the tones of Heinrich’s music broke +in, like bells pealing in a storm, upon their souls as they paused, all +stunned (like Nature before the thunder breaks), and the warm river of +melody bore away their hearts, dissolving them the while. Nathalie made +an affirmative sign with her head, as if she had come to some +conclusion: she rose and came forward from the green, flowery grave +like some enfranchised, glorified spirit; she opened her arms wide, and +came towards him. Tear after tear came coursing down her blushing face, +but as yet her heart could find no words; sinking under <i>the</i> WORLD +which was in her heart, she could totter no further, and he flew to +meet her. She held him back that she might speak the first, her tears +flowing faster and faster, but when she had cried, “My first <i>friend</i>, +and my last—for the first and last time,” she grew breathless and +dumb, and, overburdened with sorrow, sank into his arms, upon his lips, +upon his heart. +</p> + +<p> +“No! no!” she murmured; “Oh! Heaven, give me but the power to speak. +Firmian! my Firmian! Take all my happiness away with you—all that I +have on earth. But never, by all you hold most sacred, never see me +more in this world. Now” (she added very softly), “you must <i>swear</i> +this to me.” She drew her head back, and the tones of Heinrich’s music +flowed between and around them like the voice of sorrow. She gazed at +him, and his pale care-worn face wrung her heart with agony; with eyes +dim with tears, she implored him to swear that he would never see her +more. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, noble, glorious soul,” he answered, in trembling tones; “yes, +then, I <i>swear</i> to thee I will never see thee more.” Mute and +motionless, as if smitten by the hand of death, she sank with drooping +head upon his breast; and once again, like one dying, he said, “I will +never see thee more.” Then, beaming like some angel, she raised her +face, worn with emotion to him, saying, “All is over now; take the +death kiss, and speak no more.” He took it, and she gently disengaged +herself from his arms. But as she turned away, she put back her hand +and gave him the green rosebuds with the tender thorns, and saying, +“Think of to-night,” went resolutely away (trembling, nevertheless), +and was soon lost in the dark-green alleys, where but few beams of +light struck through. +</p> + +<p> +And the end of this night every soul that has loved can picture for +itself without the aid of any words of mine. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_fruit1"></a>FIRST FRUIT PIECE.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">LETTER OF DR. VICTOR TO CATO THE ELDER, ON THE CONVERSION OF <i>I</i> +INTO <i>THOU</i>, <i>HE</i>, <i>SHE</i>, <i>YE</i>, AND <i>THEY</i>; OR, THE +FEAST OF +KINDNESS OF THE 20TH MARCH. +</p> + +<p class="right">Flachsenfingen, 1st April, 1795. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sc">My dear Cato the Elder</span>, +</p> + +<p> +A breaker of his word like you—who made such a solemn promise to come +to my feast, and yet did not come—will have to be punished by +having his mouth—not stitched up (which is what savages do to +word-breakers,) for that would be a loss only to your hearers—but +<i>made to water</i>. When I shall have painted a full and faithful picture +of our peace-festival of the soul for you, I shall stop both my ears +against the curses which you will pour out on your evil genius. At this +feast we all philosophised, and we were all converted, except me, who +could not be reckoned a convert, inasmuch as I was myself the converter +of the heathen. +</p> + +<p> +Our flotilla of three boats—(the third we were obliged to take in +deference to the timidity of the ladies)—got under way about one +o’clock in the afternoon of the 20th of March, ran into the stream, +gained the open water, and soon after one we were well in sight +of the very anther-filaments and spider’s-webs on the island. At a +quarter-past two we landed—the professor, his wife, and a girl and +boy—Melchior—Jean Paul—the Government Counsellor,—Flamin—the +lovely Luna—(off goes the first of your curses here!)—the +undersigned, and his wife. +</p> + +<p> +Some Burgundy was then disembarked. At the commencement of spring +(which was to take place that day at 38 minutes past 3 o’clock) we +meant to enter upon a “stream of life,” coloured and sweetened after a +most superlative sort. With the island, Cato, many of us were quite +enraptured, and nearly all of us wished we had paid a visit to this +beautiful bowling-green in the Rhine—thin pleasure camp amid the +waves—long before. Luna, elder Cato—if I mistake not thou hast seen, +certainly once at the very least, that tender soul, which ought to +dwell in (and heighten the tint of) a white rose in place of a +body—Luna shed tears, half of delight (for they were half of sorrow +for <i>everybody</i> who was not there), half of delight not so much at the +families of alders upon the rounded bank, or the Lombardy poplars lying +trembling in intoxication of bliss in the gentle air which breathed +about them, or the sunny green paths, as at <i>all this</i> together (in the +first place), and at the spring sky and the Rhine (which was showing +that sky a picture, as it were, of its antipodean sky somewhere over +America), and at the peace and gladness of her soul—but (above all) at +the Alp in the centre of the island. +</p> + +<p> +The Alp will be sketched, if an opportunity offers, in this letter. I +at once asked Luna where <i>you</i> were. She said, “At the Frankfort Fair.” +Was she right? +</p> + +<p> +When a party arrives at a place it is not, like the <i>Anguis Fragilis</i>, +to be broken into ten twitching fragments by every touch of chance. +Even the ladies kept with us, for I had deprived them of all +opportunity of doing anything in the shape of household labour, by the +arrangements I had made for the dinner. This Barataria Island was going +to be an intellectual <i>Place d’Armes</i> and theatre of war that day. I +love disputation. Intellectual bickerings further and heighten the +happiness of congenial society, just as lovers’ quarrels are a renewal +of love, and fisticuffs a necessity of Marionette operas. Certain +people are like the Moravians, among whom the confessor and penitent +change places, each laying a picture of his soul before the other, his +own police-notice of an absconded criminal—his own advertisement in +the “Hue and Cry”; and I am like them. Any blemish or shortcoming which +I discover in myself or other people I immediately publish over half +the town in a universal German gazette, as ladies do the witnesses’ +depositions of evidence concerning strangers. For the last three weeks, +dear Cato, my soul has been glowing in the brightest sunlight of peace +and love, cast upon me by the deceased chief <i>Piqueur</i> (a man who had +not a trace of either the one or the other about him)—and now I cannot +rest till I entail this precious legacy upon all of you. +</p> + +<p> +As <i>Lieutenant de Police</i> of the island, I possessed the power of +issuing police regulations with respect to the conversation permissible +thereon, and I directed the thread of <i>our</i> talk towards the <i>Piqueur</i> +in question. But the wasps came buzzing out of their nests; the first +of them being your brother, Melchior, who drove his sting into the +<i>Piqueur’s</i> avarice, saying that people who didn’t bestow their plunder +upon the poor till they were in their own coffins, were like pikes who +eject their (swallowed) prey when caught themselves; they should rather +do as Judas Iscariot did—cast their pieces of silver into the church +<i>before</i> their hanging. The next wasp was your second brother, Jean +Paul, who said, “Misers are the only people who haven’t had enough of +life when they die. Even when they are in the very grip of Death’s +hand, they would fain grasp hold of money with their own. Like +cap-mushrooms, when they are broken off, they cling terribly to the +earth’s surface with, their bleeding moiety.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” said I, “<i>everyone</i> is a thorough miser as regards something or +other, I am sorry to say. I cannot now be so hard upon a man who +confines himself to mortifying and chastening <i>himself</i> as I used to +be. Where is the extraordinary difference between one of your learned +antiquary mint-assayers who distils, evaporates, and injects all the +pleasures of his life into the rust of a collection of coins—and a +miser who counts and weighs the specimens in <i>his</i> cabinet like so many +votes at an election? Not, in reality, so great a difference as there +is between <i>our opinions</i> of the two.” I thought I had a fine chance of +turning deftly to the subject of the <i>Piqueur</i> at this point, but the +entire company called out to me to tell them what o’clock it was. In my +capacity of Viceroy, I had disarmed all the islanders of their watches +at the landing-place (as if they had been so many swords), that they +might pass their day in a blissful eternity, where time was not. The +only one allowed to keep his was Paul—and this was because it was one +of the new Geneva sort, whose hands always point to 12 o’clock, only +telling the real time when one touches a spring. +</p> + +<p> +It was now past three. In thirty-eight minutes, spring, that pre-heaven +upon earth—that <i>second</i> paradise—would make her grand processional +progress over the ruins of the <i>first</i>. Already the clouds were all +cleared away from the sky, spring breezes played coolingly about the +sun, burning in the blue; on a vine-clad hill by the Rhine shore, a +solo-singer from the great choir of spring—a nightingale—sent on in +advance of her—was pouring out her song in a smooth-grown thicket of +pruned cherry-trees; through the open trellis-work of the boughs we +could see the notes vibrate in the feathers of her throat. +</p> + +<p> +We climbed up the artificial Mount St. Gothard. It was set round with +turf-banks and leafy niches; an oak stood on its summit by way of +crown. Man (day-fly, as he is, playing above a ripple of time) cannot +do without watches and date-indicators on the banks of the time-stream. +Although every day is a birthday and a new year’s day, he must have one +of his own into the bargain. Thirty-eight minutes struck in us. And +down from the waves of throbbing blue above us came floating a broad +breath of breeze, rocking the swelling grapes and the bare grafts, the +delicate young branchlets, and the strong, sharp-pointed winter-corn, +and lifting the soaring pigeons higher in their flight. The sun, above +Switzerland, looked, in blissful intoxication, at his own face +reflected in the sublime glittering ice-mirror of Mont Blanc, parting +(unaware) day and night into equal halves, as if with two arms of fate, +and throwing down equal portions to every land and every eye. We sang +Goethe’s “Hymn to the Spring.” The sun sent us down (like dew) from the +hill-top to the valley—the earth swelling loose fell rustling at our +feet; and wine (Lethe of life) hid from our sight the misty bunks +within which it rolled its way—mirroring only heaven and flowers. +Clotilda said (not to us, but to her Luna)—(and here, dear Cato, I am +drank with remembering; and I beg, accordingly, to invite you, at once, +for the 10th of April), “Ah! dearest, how beautiful the world is +sometimes. We ought not to think so poorly of it. Are we not like +Orestes in the ‘Iphigenia’—fancying we are in exile, though we really +are in our own native land.” +</p> + +<p> +With every downward step from the hill we sank back into the workaday +marsh-meadow of life. “What the better are we,” cried Melchior, quite +angrily, “for all this splendour in and around us, when to-morrow a +single passionate earthquake may hurl down an avalanche of snow-masses +upon all that is warm and blooming in us? it is the April of the human +heart—not the April of the universe—that causes me such vexation. We +are always at our hardest just after an <i>attendrissement</i>—and moved to +tears just after some murderous rage—as earthquakes set warm springs +flowing. Now I know quite well that, to-morrow, at the sitting of the +council, I shall attack and oppose everybody and everything. Pitiable! +pitiable! And you are not a whit better, Flamin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a whit,” said Flamin, with touching candour. Luna and my wife took +the Professor’s wife between them (each taking one of her children in +her lap), and sat down upon the green nether slope of the hill, on the +sunny side of the nightingale. We, however, were too restless to sit +down. “Alas!” (said Jean Paul, walking up and down, with his hands +folded and hanging, and his hat thrown away, so that his <i>eyes</i>, at all +events, might be higher and freer). “Alas! is <i>any</i> one a whit better? +We take a vow of universal love to our fellow men whenever we are +deeply touched—when we have buried some one, or have been thoroughly +happy, or have committed some grand transgression, or looked long and +closely at Nature, or are intoxicated with love, or some earthly form +of intoxication: but we are really only perjurers, not philanthropists, +as we fancy ourselves. We long and thirst for the love of others—but +it is like mercury, it feels and looks like fountain water, and flows +and glitters like it—but it <i>is</i> cold, dry, and heavy in reality. It +is just those very people upon whom Nature has bestowed most gifts (and +who, consequently, should not covet other people’s, but be content with +distributing their own), who, like princes, demand the more from their +fellow men the more they <i>have</i> to give them, and the less they <i>do</i> +give them. Dissensions are the more bitterly painful, the more alike +the souls are between whom they take place, just as discords are +harsher the nearer they approach the unison. We forgive without reason +because we have found fault without reason, for a rightful and +righteous anger must, of necessity, be everlasting. Nothing is a +stronger evidence of the miserable subordination of our reason to our +ruling passion than the fact that we place such a flat every-day matter +as <i>time</i> among the cures for hate, grief, love, &c.; our impulses are +to <i>forget</i> to conquer, or to grow <i>tired</i> of doing so—our wounds are +to be sanded over with the Margrave’s sympathetic powder of drift-sand +out of Time’s sand-glass! Too miserable a business altogether! But can +anything make a better of it? Certainly, least of all my complaints of +it!” +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is,” said the serene, gentle, Professor (who only uses a +<i>very</i> few pedantic tints in his style of painting), “<i>feelings</i> of +love to our fellow men<a name="div2Ref_70" href="#div2_70"><sup>[70]</sup></a> are useless without <i>reasons</i>.” “So are +reasons without feelings,” said Paul. +</p> + +<p> +“Consequently,” continued the Professor (for I could <i>not</i> manage to +get my <i>Piqueur</i> brought to bear anyhow, but had to keep him idly +in reserve), “the two have to be combined like <i>genius</i> and +<i>criticism</i>—of which the former can produce only master-pieces and +scholar-pieces, the latter only something of an everyday sort between +the two. What I think is, that our lack of love arises, not from our +coldness, but from a conviction that others do not deserve it. The +coldest of men would acquire a greater warmth of feeling for their +fellows if they acquired a higher opinion of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” asked Clotilda, “must we not forgive even the <i>wrong</i> done by +our enemies? The <i>right</i> is not matter for forgiveness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it is not,” he answered, but would let himself be no further +diverted from his point. “The only ugliness and hatefulness which we +can truly experience hatred for is that of a <i>moral</i> sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“In opposition to that view of the question,” said Jean Paul, “I might +adduce the fierce combats of animals, and nurseries in a state of war; +for in neither of these cases is there any idea of <i>immorality</i> of the +enemy, although <i>hatred</i> of him exists. But were I to adduce these +cases, I could answer myself—at least, so so. If we directed our +hatred against things other than the immoral, we should be just as +angry with the hanging branch which strikes us in the face as with the +person who broke it so that it should be so placed as to do so. The +rage of a chastised child is quite a different thing from the alarmed +instinct of self-conservancy—the feeling of avoidance of nitric acid, +or of bodily hurt. The former has in it a duplex sense of dislike, the +two components of which are most dissimilar—the one referring to the +cause, the other to the effect. We must distinguish between beings +which are capable of morality, and such as are not, in <i>kind</i>—not in +<i>degree</i>; those <i>incapable</i> of morality can never be made capable of +it by the mere lapse of time, or step by step. Whence, if children at any +period of their age were <i>utterly</i> non-moral beings, it would follow +that they could never, at <i>any</i> period, <i>begin</i> to <i>become</i> moral +beings. In brief, their anger is nothing other than a dim sense of +other people’s injustice. As to the animals, I don’t know what else to +say than that there <i>must</i> be in them something analogous to our moral +sense. Those who (like us) believe them to have immortal souls, must, +as a matter of course, concede them <i>some</i> beginnings some +pre-existent germs of morality—although these may be overpowered and +kept in the background by their animal natures even to a greater extent +than (for instance) conscience is in sleep, drunkenness, or insanity. +But alas! all this is night within night! And I hope this obscurity +will be considered some excuse, Professor, for the manner in which I +have obstructed and built out <i>your</i> light.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” he went on, “since hatred only concerns itself with <i>moral</i> +defects, how strange it is that we never hate <i>ourselves</i>, even for the +gravest moral defects.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> think,” said Flamin, “that one <i>does</i> sometimes feel the +<i>deadliest</i> hatred of one’s self, for over-haste.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then,” said Jean Paul, “your argument would apply just as well to +love—at least it would half apply. Come, let’s hear what you’ve got to +say to that?” +</p> + +<p> +“We never <i>hate</i> ourselves,” I said. “We <i>despise</i> and <i>pity</i> +ourselves, when we have done wrong. Although—I <i>must</i> add this—we +hate all men, our ownselves excepted, for vices. Can this be right?” +“Self-hatred,” went on the Professor, “is not possible, for hatred is +nothing but the wishing of evil to the object of it—<i>i. e</i>., a desire +to punish, not for <i>bettering’s</i> sake, but for <i>punishing’s</i>. But the +most repentant of sinners never can wish himself made the subject of a +chastening of this kind; and even if he could, such a wish would be +merely a <i>disguised</i> desire for <i>bettering</i>—<i>i. e</i>., for greater +happiness. But to a transgressor other than ourselves we hardly can +concede <i>rapidity</i> of conversion, not, at all events, until he has gone +through a proper expiation. What distinguishes our feeling concerning +other people’s errors from our feeling concerning our own is a sham +self-love. The very minutest particle of hatred desires the unhappiness +of its object; that is what I have got to prove now.” +</p> + +<p> +His own wife here interrupted him with the words, “My heart tells me, +as plainly as possible, that I could never wish any serious misfortune +to happen to my bitterest enemy—such as money troubles, or anything +about her children. I could not bear even the idea of a tear being +brought to her eyes on my account.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I suppose not,” he went on. “The better nature within us never +wishes its antipode a broken leg, would not leave him without a strip +of lint, or a wish for his recovery. But I know that that same ‘better +nature’ does take a delight in his minor skin-wounds—his being put to +confusion, his sleigh slipping down hill backwards, his losing his +hair. The gentlest of souls hides, at the back of its tender sympathy +with great troubles, its <i>untender</i> satisfaction with small ones, such +as call for condolence (<i>a smaller thing than sympathy</i>). The tenderest +of people, people incapable of indicting the smallest wound imaginable +on their enemy’s <i>skin</i>, are delighted to make a thousand deep ones in +his <i>heart</i>.” “Ah!” said Luna, “how can that be possible?” “I don’t +think it <i>would</i> be possible,” Clotilda answered her, “if the pain of +the soul had as definite a physiognomy, and as real tears, as that of +the body.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” said the Professor; “that is just where it is. To make +ourselves feel more gently towards the wicked we have only to think of +them as delivered wholly over into our hands. For what harm would one +do them then? The moment they <i>acknowledged</i> their fault we would stay +the rack, and bid the torture cease. What redoubles our indignation, +and renders it everlasting, is the very impossibility of inflicting any +punishment.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that is quite true,” said Melchior. “The oftener I read of these +two live guillotines of their age, Alba and Philip (whose lips were +shears of the Parcæ), or of those two other mowers of mankind, Marat +and Robespierre, the deeper does the aquafortis of anger etch their +condemnation into my heart, although death has drawn up their Acts of +Amnesty.” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet, after all,” I put in (leaving the Piqueur in the rear for the +present), “if anybody would deliver over the King and the Duke to you +and me here this afternoon, and a couple of caldrons of boiling oil +into the bargain, <i>I</i> feel quite certain I couldn’t throw one of them +in—at any rate till the oil had stood a long time in the cold. I +should let them off with a good flogging—say 100 lashes, or so. Ah! +what a cast-iron sort of fellow were he who should not soothe, and +comfort with cooling, healing touch (had he the power) a heart breaking +with anguish, a face whereon the worm of suffering was ploughing its +tortuous track! At the same time (I continued, rapidly; for I was +determined to bring in my Piqueur somehow or other), where emotion is +concerned, the memory of past errors is not the smallest safeguard +against new ones.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see, you won’t allow me to speak,” the Professor broke in. “I +still owe you a tremendous number of proofs, and I am most anxious to +acquit the debt. Our <i>hatred</i>, being an emotion, always turns every +<i>action</i> into a <i>whole life</i>; every <i>attribute</i> into a <i> +personality</i> +(or, to speak more accurately, because our only mode of <i>seeing</i> any +personality is by its reflection in the mirror of its attributes) +converts <i>one</i> attribute into the sum of them. It is only in the case +of liking—of friendship—that we find it easy to separate the +attribute from the personality. Hatred can not do it. Nay, in the case +of liking, the <i>converse</i> transformation takes place—that of the +personality into the attribute. We hate as if the object of our hatred +had never possessed any virtues, or inclination to them—neither pity +nor truthfulness, love of the young, one single good hour, anything +whatever. In brief, since it is with the <i>individuality</i> of the person +whose punishment we are decreeing that we are angry (not with its +characteristic of the moment), we make him out to be a <i>wholly</i> wicked +being. Yet such a being is not conceivable. The voice of conscience +speaking in that being would be of itself <i>one</i> goodness in him, even +though it spoke in vain; the pain of that conscience would be another; +each joy and each impulse of his life another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! how delightful,” said Luna, “that there is nobody so utterly bad; +nobody whom one would have to hate altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see,” he continued, “it cannot be the <i>me</i> of a person that we +hate; for the <i>me</i> is still the same <i>me</i> when it improves, and wins +our regard.” +</p> + +<p> +In the warmth of our discussion we were losing sight altogether of one +of the two concave mirrors which distort other people’s moral +distortions for us even more wildly than they are distorted to begin +with—I mean, our own egotism. Often, when I have seen and heard women +squabbling in the market-place (women of whom one was just as good as +the other, and with just as good an opinion of herself), and one +hurling her invectives with delight, like a red-hot stone, at the +other’s head, which seethed and swelled in waves of anger around that +stone, while a third woman kept calm and cool in the midway-path +between, I have been ashamed of the human race—ashamed that the +self-same reproach, or immorality, which <i>ought</i> to produce exactly the +same effect upon all the three, should make <i>too</i> strong an impression +on the one, too weak a one on the other, none whatever on the third. +</p> + +<p> +Paul pointed to the <i>second</i> of these distorting mirrors—our bodily +senses. For these render the vinegar of hatred doubly bitter by +throwing into its fermenting-vat these parts of the enemy which <i>they</i> +take cognizance of—his clothes, movements, gestures, tones, &c. +</p> + +<p> +Here we reached the Gordian knot which only I could cut with the +Piqueur. “Who is to save us from these bodily senses?” I inquired (with +a certain amount of hopeful expectancy). Melchior answered, “I do not +allow them to influence my philanthropy, at all events. They are the +straw which feeds the flame under that ascending windbag balloon, the +heart.” +</p> + +<p> +Jean Paul thrust me back from the Gordian knot. “I,” he said, “have an +admirable sweetener at all times in readiness to apply when a sinner +embitters my senses. I take him, and (like a victorious enemy) strip +all the clothes off him, not leaving him so much as his hat or his wig. +When once I’ve got him standing there before me, cold and wretched as +any corpse (I mean, of course, in imagination), I begin to feel sorry +for the scoundrel. But this is not enough. I have got to sweeten myself +a good deal more than this; so I proceed to slit him up with a long, +slicing cut from top to bottom into three cavities (as if he were a +carp), so that I can see his heart and brain pulsating. The mere sight +of a red human heart (Danaid’s bucket for happiness—safe storehouse of +so many a sorrow) makes my own soft and heavy; and I have often not +forgiven a street robber till the Professor has been shewing us his +heart and brain in the anatomical theatre. ‘Thou unhappy, sorrowful +heart,’ I have always found myself thinking, with deep, sympathetic +emotion, ‘how many a blood-billow has gone surging through thee, +glowing and freezing in the same moment.’ But if all this process +failed to have its effect, I should proceed to extremities, and smite +my enemy dead; then take the naked, fluttering, trembling soul—like an +evening moth—out of its brain-chamber chrysalis, and, holding up the +quivering night-creature between my forefinger and thumb, gaze at it +without a trace of rancour left in me.” +</p> + +<p> +“To picture one’s enemy to one’s self as unclothed, or disembodied,” +said I, “so as to be able to put up with him, as though he were dead +(perhaps that is the chief reason why we love the dead), is just the +operation <i>I</i> perform too. I often try to soften the unpleasant effect +which some repulsive physiognomy produces upon me by thinking of it as +scalped, and with its skin folded back.” +</p> + +<p> +And now I determined, seriously and in earnest, that the sceptre and +throne insignia of the conversation, should no more depart from my +hands. Wherefore I commenced as follows: “But who is to provide us with +the time and the power, not only to remember, but to act upon, this +precious and reliable principle, or rule of conduct, right in the thick +of this world’s Pyrrhic war-dance, and the rapid evolutions of our +emotions? Who is to stoke the æther-flame of philanthropy with a +sufficient supply of combustible matter, seeing that there are such +hosts of people continually drowning it out, smothering it up, and +building it in! Who is to make up to us for the lack of a gentle, quiet +temperament? Who, or what?” +</p> + +<p> +Just as I was going to fix the Piqueur on to this lance-shaft by way of +point, the cold dinner was brought, and the Professor’s wife went to +fetch her children. For the dinner had to be over before sunset; +because, like a fresh supply of green firewood, it would drown out the +flame of enthusiasm for a time, and break the unity of its vertical, +purple fire pyramid. The company, therefore, waited in vain for me to +go on with what I had to say. I shook my head, expressing, by nods, +that I should do so when we were all together again, and sitting down. +</p> + +<p> +While we were at dinner I was able to set up my speaking machine, and +set it a-going at my ease. +</p> + +<p> +“I asked you once or twice before dinner,” I commenced, “<i>who</i> can +invigorate and quicken our principles of love to our fellows, and set +them fully to work? I answer, the chief Piqueur can; only I’m afraid +I’ve made so many false starts, and baulked in so many of my runs +before making this grand jump of mine, that I have led you to entertain +far greater expectations concerning it than it (or I) may be able to +fulfil. A day or two before the stump-end of the chief Piqueur’s +life-candle fell down and went guttering out in its candlestick-socket, +he sent for me to the side of his bed of suffering and begged me—not +to prescribe for him, but—to make a thorough inspection of his house. +He drew my head down close to his wretched pillow, and said, ‘You see, +doctor, Death has got his hunting-knife at my throat. But I’m not sorry +to go, and what little I leave behind me in the shape of worldly gear +goes all to the poor. It’s but little that I have ever thought of +scraping together for <i>myself</i>, and that is a comfort to think on now. +It’s for the <i>poor</i> that I have screwed and saved, pinched and pared; +and when a man has done that it’s a pleasure to him to make his will; +he knows it will be paid back again <i>elsewhere</i>. But there’s one hard +stone at my heart still. You see I have neither chick nor child +belonging to me, and when the breath is out of my body, the old woman +who keeps my room in order will be in the house by herself. She’s an +honest body enough, but as poor as a church mouse, and pretty sure to +help herself to something before the seals are put on my effects. Now, +doctor, you are a man who are just as good to the poor as I am myself; +you often prescribe for them gratis; I want to ask <i>you</i> to go through +the house with the notary (I don’t trust <i>him</i> a bit more than I do the +old woman), take an inventory of what there is, and have a regular +notarial instrument drawn up concerning my property. I’ve left the +whole of it to the Poor-house and the Institution for Destitute +Gamekeepers. The notary must begin with my breeches under the pillow +here, because my purse is there.’ +</p> + +<p> +“A man whose stubble Death is in the very act of turning up with his +plough, has, upon me, a more powerful claim than that of the <i>first</i> +request—that of the <i>last</i>. I came the next day, bringing with me the +notary, and also my dislike to the dying man and his distrustful +suspicions. With gay indifference I helped to protocol the effects in +the sick-room—his shooting-jacket, worn into shining patches by his +old game-bag—his old guns and knives—even such matters as a leather +over-shoe for his thumb, and a long mummy bandage for his nose, which +he had worn on occasions when he had hurt himself in these members with +his gun. +</p> + +<p> +“As we went through the other silent chambers—empty snail-shells of +his shrivelled, dried-up life—my frozen blood began to thaw within me, +and to move in warm, light mercury-globules. But when I came to the +lumber-room, with the notary, and tuned over the rag-fair of his old +night-shirts—(caterpillar cases and blood-shirts of his feverish +nights, in which I seemed still to see him groaning and thirsting)—and +his <i>Pathebrief</i>,<a name="div2Ref_71" href="#div2_71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> and his name copied from thence with all its +flourishes on to his pointer’s collar—and the picture of his pretty +mother with him as a smiling infant in her lap—and his wife’s bridal +garland of wire, covered with green silk—(Oh! for goodness’ sake do +<i>not</i> interrupt me with talk—I’ve had enough of that, Heaven knows). +When I took in my hands these opera-costumes, these theatrical +properties, in which the sick player down-stairs had performed his +<i>probe-rolle</i><a name="div2Ref_72" href="#div2_72"><sup>[72]</sup></a> of a Harpaxus for the benefit of the poor—not only +did the poor fellow’s <i>moral</i> emptiness of treasury, and miserable rate +of monthly salary, strike me with pain, but, moreover, I wished him <i>no +heavier suffering, no severer punishment, than he would wish for +himself, were he really to repent in good earnest before his plunge +into the depths of the soil</i>. No, not so much, for the matter of that. +Therefore, my dislike to him was gone. For I put myself in his +place—not <i>outwardly</i> only, as people generally do, fancying +themselves in another person’s physical place with <i>their</i> own souls, +<i>their</i> own wishes, habitudes, &c.—but <i>inwardly</i>—in <i>his</i> +mind, his +youth, wishes, sufferings, thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Poor <i>Piqueur</i>,’ I said, as I went down-stairs; ‘I have no more +satiric pleasure now over your gnawing suspicion, your errors, your +self-shooting covetousness, your hungry avarice. You have got to live +through a long eternity with that self, that “me” of yours, the best +way you can, just as I have with mine. You have got to rise with that +self of yours at the Resurrection, and go about with it, and look after +it, and care for its welfare. And, of course, you can’t but be <i>fond</i> +of <i>yourself</i>, just as <i>I am</i> of <i>myself</i>, and put up with all +that +self’s defects and shortcomings whether you will or not. Go in peace +then into the other world, where the broken glasses of your harmonica +of life will be replaced with fresh-tuned ones—in the great home of +all the spirits!’ +</p> + +<p> +“The old woman met us on the stairs crying out that the man was dying. +I went to his bed-side, looked upon his cold, yellow, senseless form, +and saw that he would very soon throw off his last stage-dress, his +body. Next day the tolling bell announced that, he had returned to the +dust—gone back into the ground—that, stage dressing-room of souls and +flowers. (And we are <i>rung</i> off and on to that stage, as well as +others.) +</p> + +<p> +“Meanwhile I made an experiment with my modified and mildened system of +treatment, upon the poor notary devil; the day after I tried it on the +jurists who came from the college. (Jean Paul! communicate your idea to +us by-and-bye—do <i>not</i> interrupt me just now)—I did this, I say, and +found that I was able to establish a heart-peace even with the +plebeians among them—who dishonour their calling—the only really +<i>free</i> one in all the body politic. For in the cases of these lawyers, +and those of my own medical colleagues from whose breasts I have been +so often in such a hurry to cut off, and melt down, the medals of +honour which they have cast for themselves, I have had merely to take +away the roof from over their heads, lift the rafters from their walls, +and bare their houses to the four winds of heaven. Then I could look in +and see everything there—their housekeeping, their unoffending wives, +their sleep (<i>i. e</i>., mock-death), sicknesses, sorrows, birth-days, and +funeral-days, and this reconciled me to them! Of a truth, to love a +man, I have only to think of his children, his parents—the love he +feels and inspires. One can easily perform this philanthropic +transmigration of soul at any moment, without help of the balloon of +phantasy, or the diving-bell of profound reflection. Good heavens! it +<i>does</i> seem hard (and a shame and disgrace into the bargain) that it +should have taken me thirty years of my life to understand properly +what it is that self-love is really driving at—my own and everybody +else’s—what it wants is, to be surrounded with mere repetitions of +its own ‘me.’ It insists upon every infant on earth being a parson’s +son (as I am)—that everybody shall have lost, and gained, noble +friends—that everybody shall be an M.D., and have studied at +Göttingen—that his name shall be Sebastian, and that he shall be an +overseer of mines, and write his life in forty-five dog-post-days—in +brief, that this world shall contain a thousand million Victors instead +of one. I beg that everybody may send spies into his soul, to look +carefully about them and see whether it be not the case that there are +thousands of instances in which what we hate a man for is, either that +he is as fat as a prize pig, or as lean as a stick of vermicelli—or +that he is a district secretary, or a Roman Catholic watchman in +Augspurg, and wears a coat white on the one side, and green on the +other—or that he eats his veal with melted butter;<a name="div2Ref_73" href="#div2_73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> (or, at all +events, hate them <i>more</i> for these reasons; for when we are +<i>indifferent</i> to people, all their external characteristics, beautiful +or ugly, merely increase our indifference). People are so deep sunk in +their dear selves that everybody yawns at the <i>menu</i> of everybody +else’s favourite dishes, but expects <i>them</i> to be interested when <i>he</i> +reads out <i>his</i> to <i>them</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +That feathered echo, the nightingale, was singing to us phrases of the +music of the spheres, to us inaudible until thus repeated to us by her. +But I had my rapid descent from my Mont Cenis to finish, and could but +give utterance to my applause (of the bird and her music) by a hasty +nod. “Heavenly! Elysian! I’ve been hearing it every now and then. But, +one thing more. Since my sentimental journey in other people’s souls, I +have been happier and fatter than I used to be, in ball-rooms, +anterooms, and large assemblages (hot lark-spits which roasted all the +fat out of a Swift). This enduring of transgressors includes a greater +enduring still of fools and dunces, although the great world makes war +on these three tolerated sects in just the contrary ratio. +</p> + +<p> +“The amnesty thus granted to humanity makes the duty of loving more +easy to perform; moreover, it renders the deep blissfulness of +friendship and love more justifiable; for the glow, the fire of the +latter often vitrifies and calcines the heart towards the rest of +mankind. And this is the reason why the last and best fruit....” +</p> + +<p> +Clotilda looked inquiringly here, as if begging to be allowed one word +of remonstrance with me for forgetting to put myself in the place of +those whose transformation I was thus extolling. I reddened, and +paused. “This,” observed Jean Paul, “is the reason why a concert-room +audience cries out the loudest against noise or disturbance just +during the loveliest adagios—when people are most deeply touched—and +swear and weep at the same time.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot help being ashamed of an experience of my own,” said +Clotilda. “The other day I cried so at reading Silly’s letters (in +Allwill’s Papers) that I was obliged to put the book down. Then I went +to the casino with my head full of what I had been reading—and I +dare not tell you what hard opinions I entertained, several times that +very evening, of several people of my acquaintance. I expected of +<i>them</i> that they should all be in exactly the same mood of mind as +myself—although, of course, they had not just come from reading +Silly’s letters.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is exactly what I was coming to,” concluded I. “The last and best +fruit, which ripens late in a soul ever warm, is tenderness towards the +hard—patience with the impatient—kindly feeling for the selfish—and +philanthropy towards the misanthropic.” +</p> + +<p> +It is a very odd thing, beloved Cato, but Jean Paul has just come and +told me a murder-tale of human iniquity, which goes hissing through my +heart like a red-hot iron. All my <i>theories</i> stand bright and clear as +stars around my soul, but I can do nothing save look inactively down +upon the billows in which my blood is foaming, heated by this +subterranean earth-fire, and wait until they cool down and subside. +Alas! we poor, poor mortals! Jean Paul, who knew the story the day +before yesterday, and had consequently all that time to put the cooling +process in practice in advance of me, is going to take charge of the +picture exhibition of our insular flower-pieces in my stead, and add a +postscript to this. Which is well, for to-day I really could not do it. +By the 10th of April the air will have cooled; then <i>you</i> are sure to +be coming, as the French election meetings begin then. We must keep the +“settling weeks” of your great feast and fairtide here. Alas! in what a +disquiet condition have I to stop writing to you. <i>You</i> will go on +reading, but not +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:85%">Your +</p> +<p style="text-indent:90%">Victor. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +<h3><a name="div1Ref_jeanps"></a>POSTSCRIPT BY JEAN PAUL.</h3> + +<p> +DEAR BROTHER. +</p> + +<p> +Our Victor’s virtuous indignation will soon be over and past. The +reason why he, and I too, now, have made a written confession of the +cure of our disposition to censure our fellows, is, that we may be +compelled to be excessively ashamed of ourselves if ever we chide for +more than a minute, or hate for more than a moment. This all embracing +love demands a sacrifice, which is made with greater hesitation than +one would expect—the sacrifice of the pleasure of being satisfied with +one’s self—which anger adds to the contemplation of other people’s +faults (and satire to the contemplation of other people’s follies)—by +way of a sweetening ingredient, and whose place is taken by a pure and +unalloyed regret at the frequency with which the disease shifts its +seat, and at the chronicity of the bleeding of the wounds and scars of +helpless man. +</p> + +<p> +However, for the present, what I would fain do is to steer our floating +island, and its blessed twilight, close up to your view. +</p> + +<p> +The sun was sinking towards the cloud Alps, and glowing white over +France in the west as if it should shortly drop down on its plains as a +gleaming shield of freedom, or fall into its billowy ocean as a +wedding-ring between heaven and earth. The shades of evening were +already overflowing the first two steps of the hill, and the darkening +Rhine seemed to be passing an arm of night around the earth. We +ascended our little steps as the sun descended his great ones, seeming, +as we ascended, to rise from his burning grave with the face of a saint +at the Resurrection. The hill lifted up our eyes and our souls. +Remembering my shortcomings I took Victor’s hand, and said, “Ah! dear +Victor! could it but come to pass that one could make a treaty of peace +with all mankind, and with one’s own self—if one’s shattered heart +could absorb and retain, from out the leaven of the hating and hated +world, nothing but the sweet, mild, life-sap of love—as the oyster, +amid mud and slime, takes nothing save bright pure water into his +house. Ah! if one but knew that such an event were about to come to +pass of a truth, an evening of happiness such as this would refresh +and fill one’s thirsting breast, (all <i>cracked</i> with thirst and +dryness)—would still the everlasting sigh.” Victor answered (not +looking round, but keeping his glowing and beglowed face—which his +loving heart suffused with a brighter tint—turned to the sun, now +burning half sunk in the earth), “Perhaps,” he said, “that time may +come; a time when we shall all be happy when a human being smiles—even +should he not deserve it—when we shall speak kindly to every one—not +by way of a mere sacrifice to the laws of polite society, but for very +love—and there will be no difficulties, no complications, for hearts +which will no longer have any inward annoyance to conceal. To-day the +spring sun rests upon the world like the eye of a mother, and shines +warm upon every heart, the wicked as well as the good. Yes, thou +Eternal One, we here now give our hands and our hearts to thy whole +creation, and no longer hate anything which thou hast made.” We were +overpowered, and we embraced with tears, and no words, in the first +darkening of the night. Over the sun’s burial place stood the zodiacal +light, a red grave pyramid, flaming unmoved up into the silent deep of +blue. +</p> + +<p> +The City of God which hangs displayed on high above our earth, built on +the arch of the Milky Way, appeared from out the endless distances with +all its shining sun-lights. +</p> + +<p> +We came down from the hill—each spot of earth was a hill just then; an +unseen hand lifted our souls on high above the dark vapour-circle, and +they looked down as if from alps, seeing nothing save gleaming peaks of +other mountain ranges—for all the mean, all that was not the high, all +graves, petty goals, and life careers of humanity, were veiled in heavy +mist. +</p> + +<p> +We lost each other amongst the paths, but in our hearts we were all +together. We met again, but the silence in our souls was not broken, +for each heart beat just as did all the others, and there was no +difference, save the being alone, between a prayer and an embrace. +</p> + +<p> +The scattered flames of our emotion had gradually merged into one +glowing sun sphere, as the ancients believed that the fluttering +after-midnight fires thickened ere morning into a sun.<a name="div2Ref_74" href="#div2_74"><sup>[74]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +But I, a stranger, alas! in this paradise stood beneath the leafless +branches, sad, and alone, beside the dark-blue Rhine stream where the +stars were mirrored—it glided, with gently heaving wavelets, over the +German soil, binding two great republics<a name="div2Ref_75" href="#div2_75"><sup>[75]</sup></a> together, like some +heavenly band; and to me it seemed as though the thirst, the fire, of a +breast no broader even than mine could be quenched with nothing less +than the waters of this great river. Alas! we are all like this. In the +transient clasp of our little grandeurs and blisses, we long to rest, +and <i>die</i>, upon something <i>great</i>. We long to cast ourselves into the +depths of the heavens when we see them glitter and sparkle above us—or +down upon the many-tinted earth, when her flowers and grasses wave—or +into the endless river, flowing as if from out the past onwards into +the future. +</p> + +<p> +Our ladies and the children had gone away—departing in silence from +this anchorage of hours so happy—I saw them as they floated over the +wavelets, singing like swans, and dropping spring flowers into the +ripples, that they might float back as souvenirs to us upon our island +shore. The children were sleeping softly in their arms, between the +glories of the heaven and of the earth, lulled by the arms, the songs, +and the ripples. +</p> + +<p> +When it was 12 o’clock, and the first morning of spring was come, +Victor summoned us all to the hill, we knew not wherefore. All around +and beneath us was the music of the rush of the Rhine, and through it, +came gliding clear the bright spring-melody of the nightingale; the +stars of the twelfth hour sank, drop by drop, into the darkened grave +of the sun, and went paling out among the grey ashes of the western +clouds. Suddenly a straight, beautiful flame shot up in the west, and +music came palpitating through the darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you not think of your France,” said Victor, “the first hour of day +is breaking for <i>her</i> this 21st of March—the day when the six thousand +primary assemblies form themselves, like stars, into one constellation, +that one law may burst into being from out a million hearts.” +</p> + +<p> +As I looked up to the sky, the Milky Way struck me as being the beam of +the balance of hidden destiny, in whose weighing-pans (which are +worlds) the broken, shattered, bleeding nations are weighed out for +eternity. These destiny scales waver up and down as yet, because it was +only a century or two ago that the weights were put into them. +</p> + +<p> +We drew closer together, and (inspired by the night and the music) +said, “Thou, poor country! may thy sun and thy day rise higher ere +long, and cast away the blood-shirt of its morning red. May the higher +genius wipe away the blood from thy hands, and the tears from thine +eyes! Oh! may that genius build, support, and guard for ever the Grand +Freedom Temple which is vaulted over thee like a second heaven: but +also comfort every mother and every father, every child and every +wife—and dry all eyes which weep for the beloved, crushed hearts which +have bled and fallen, and now lie under that temple as basement +stones.” +</p> + +<p> +What I am going to say now can only be said to my brother, for nobody +else would pardon it. Victor and I got into a boat, which was made fast +with a rope to the bank, and which was drifting about with the current. +We worked ourselves back to the bank, and then let the boat drift +northwards again upon the ripples. In our souls (as in the world +without us) sadness and exaltation were strangely blent: the music on +the bank came and went—tones and stars rose and fell. The vault of +heaven showed in the Rhine like some shattered bell, and up above us +the dome of the temple wherein dwelleth Eternity lay in calm and +motionless rest, with all its unchanging suns. From the eastward the +spring breathed upon us, and the tree skeletons in the churchyard of +the winter felt the presage of a near resurrection. Of a sudden Victor +said—“It feels to me as though the river here were the stream of +Time—our fluctuating life is carried along upon the waves of both +towards the midnight.” Here my brother called to me from the island, +“Brother, come into harbour and sleep; it is between one and two +o’clock.” +</p> + +<p> +This fraternal voice, coming to me athwart the music of the wavelets, +suddenly brought a new world—perhaps the under-world—into my open +soul. For a lightning flash of memory gleamed in a moment over all my +dim being, reminding me that it was on this very night two-and-thirty +years ago that I had made my entry upon this overclouded earth, +shrouded with daily nights—and that this hour, between one and two +o’clock, in which my brother was calling me into haven and to sleep, +was the hour of my birth (which so often deprives man of both). +</p> + +<p> +There come to us moments of twilight in which it seems as though day +and night were in the act of dividing—as if we were in the very +process of being created or annihilated; the stage of life and the +spectators fly back out of view, our part is played out, we stand far +off, in darkness and alone, but we have still got on our theatre dress, +and we look at ourselves in it, and ask, “What is it that thou art, +<i>now</i>, my <i>me</i>!” When we thus ask ourselves this, there is, beyond +ourselves, nothing of great or of firm—everything has turned to an +endless cloud of night (with rare and feeble gleams within it), which +keeps falling lower and lower, and heavier with drops. Only high up +above the cloud shines a resplendence—and that is God; and far beneath +it a minute speck of light—and that is a human “Me”! +</p> + +<p> +The heart is made of heavy earth, and therefore it cannot long endure +such moments. I passed on to those sweeter seasons in which the full, +tear-intoxicated heart neither can, nor will, do aught but simply weep. +I had not the courage to drag my dear Victor down from the sublime +region in which he was to my trifling pettinesses—but I asked him to +remain beside me for a little time in this stillness which lay so +silently upon the dark stream as it went flowing toward midnight and +the south. Then I leant and pressed myself fondly to his side—and my +little tears fell unseen into the great river—as though it had been +the great stream of Time itself, into which all eyes drop their tears, +and so many thousand hearts their blood-drops—for all which it neither +swells nor flows the faster. +</p> + +<p> +I thought as I gazed at the Rhine, “And thus, too, the dancing, billowy +current of Life goes flowing on its course from out its source—hidden +like the Nile’s. How little, as yet, have I done, or enjoyed! Our +deserts, and our enjoyments, what petty things they are! Our +<i>metamorphoses</i> are greater; our heads and our hearts go into the +ground irrecognisable—altered a thousandfold—like the head of the man +with the iron mask.<a name="div2Ref_76" href="#div2_76"><sup>[76]</sup></a> Ay! and <i>did</i> we but change! but we change so +little in the earth, or even in ourselves. Every moment is to us the +goal of all that have come before it. We take the seed of life for the +harvest of it—the honey-dew on the ears for the sweet fruit—and we +chew the flowers, like cattle! Ah! thou great GOD! what a night lieth +around our sleep! we <i>fall</i> and <i>rise</i> with closed eyelids, and fly +about blind, and in a deep slumber.”<a name="div2Ref_77" href="#div2_77"><sup>[77]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +My hand was hanging into the water, and the cool ripples buoyed it up +and down. I thought, “How straight and immovable the little light +within us burns, amid the blasts of Nature’s storm! Everything around +me contends and clashes together with gigantic might. The stream seizes +upon the islands and the cliffs—the night-wind comes upon the river, +and stalks across it, thrusting its wavelets back, and wages its strife +with the forests—even up there in the tranquil blue, worlds are +working against worlds—the eternal, endless mights flowing and +rushing, like rivers, one against another, they come together in whirl +and roar—and on the face of that eternal whirl the little worlds float +eddying round the sun-vortex; nay, those shimmering constellations +themselves rising zenithwards with that grand and gentle peace and +calm—what are they but mountain ranges of raging sun-volcanoes, +stretching into infinity beyond the reach of mind to follow. And yet +the human spirit lies at rest amid this storm, peaceful as a quiet moon +above a windy night. In me, at this moment, all is gentle peace. I see +my own little life-brook running by me, falling, with all the rest, +into the river of Time. The clear-eyed soul looks through the raging +blood-rivers which are flowing round it, and through the storms which +darken and obscure it, and sees, beyond them all, quiet meadows, +gentle, peaceful waters, moon-shimmer, and a lovely, beautiful, +tranquil, placid, peaceful angel slowly wandering there.” Yes, yes; +within my soul there was a quiet Good Friday—wind-still, rain-free, +and mild—neither cold nor over-warm—though shrouded in a tender +cloud. +</p> + +<p> +But a clear consciousness of rest is speedily the undoing thereof. I +saw, floating near the island, three hyacinths which Clotilda had +dropped into the wavelets as she went away. “Now, in this, thy +birth-hour,” I said to myself, “the ocean of eternity is washing +thousands of little hearts on to the stony shore of this world; how +will it be with them one day when their birthday feast comes round? And +what are your countless brothers who, with you, came thirty-two years +ago into this vapour-ball, thinking now? Perhaps some terrible sorrow +makes them think with bitterness of their first hour. Perhaps they +sleep now—as I have slept—and must again—only deeper, deeper.” And +then all my younger and older friends, now sleeping that deeper sleep, +fell heavy upon my broken breast. +</p> + +<p> +“I know, I think,” my Victor said, “what you are reflecting on so +silently, and regretting so mutely.” I answered “No,” and then I told +him all. +</p> + +<p> +Then we went quickly back, and I put my arms about my other brother, +and my heart went out in longing towards thee. At length we took our +departure from this building-place of a more peaceful system of +doctrine for our hearts—this quiet island; and the lofty hill—grand +pedestal of the vases of our joy-flowers, chancel of the great temple, +light-house tower in our haven of rest—seemed to gaze long after us, +the hanging garden of our souls lying upon it in starry light. +</p> + +<p> +And as we came to the shore, Hesperus, as star of the morning (spark +which springs and shines so near the sun), rose up above the morning +mists, and earlier than even the Aurora of morning, proclaimed his +sire’s approach. And as we thought that he shines, too, as the star of +evening upon our nights here below, and yet adorns the east, and the +after-midnight hours with the first of the glittering pearls of dew, +each said to his gladsome heart, “And so shall all the evening stars of +this our life shine upon us as stars of morning at a future day.” +</p> + +<p> +Think thou, too, of morning, my brother, when thou art looking upon the +even; and when a sun is setting for thee, turn thee about and thou +mayest see a moon rising in the east. The moon gives warrant that the +sun is shining still—as Hope says, there still is happiness. But come +now soon to thy Victor—and to +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:75%">Thy Brother, +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:87%">J. P. +</p> + +<h3>END OF BOOK III.</h3> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_book4"></a>BOOK IV.</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch15"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">ROSA VON MEYERN—TONE-ECHOES AND AFTER BREEZES FROM THE LOVELIEST +OF ALL NIGHTS—LETTERS OF NATHALIE AND FIRMIAN—TABLE-TALK BY +LEIBGEBER. +</p> + +<p> +If on some dewy, warm and starry night of spring the miners in some +salt mine were to have their great penthouse-roof of earth lifted away +from over their heads, and find themselves thus, of a sudden, brought +out from their confined, candle-lit cellar into the wide, dim, +sleeping-hall of nature—out of their subterranean stillness in among +the breezes, the perfumes, the whisperings of the spring—these miners +would be exactly in Firmian’s case, whose heretofore prisoned, silent, +and serene soul the night just past had driven out of its prison with +might, darkening it with new sorrows and joys, and a whole new world. +Heinrich maintained a most speaking silence concerning the night in +question, and, on the other hand, Firmian betrayed a mute hunting after +speech. Strive as he might to fold those wings of his (which had been +stretched all moist from under their wing-covers on that foregoing +night for a first time), they <i>would not</i> fold quite short enough to go +back under them again. Matters got to feel very oppressive and sultry +for Leibgeber after a time. On that previous night they had come back +in perfect silence to Bayreuth and to bed, and he wearied at the +thought of all the demi-shades and demi-tints which would have to be +got ready on the palette before so much as four bold touches could be +given to the picture of the night. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps there is nothing more regrettable than that we do not all have +the hooping-cough at one and the same time—or are not all suffering +the sorrows of Werther—or are not all twenty-one, or sixty-one—or +have not all hypochondria—or are not all spending our honeymoons—or +indulging in games of banter. How charming it would be (were we all +choristers singing in the same coughing-tutti) to find everybody else +in just the same condition as ourselves—and put up with them +therefore, and forgive in them that in which they were just like <i>us</i>! +But as things really are—now when the one coughs to-day, and the other +not till to-morrow (the simultaneous company-coughing in church always +excepted); when one has to be taking dancing-lessons while another is +saying his prayers in the conventicle; when one father’s daughter is +being held up at the font while the other’s son is being lowered into +his little grave;—<i>now</i>, when destiny is always striking on the hearts +about us chords quite unrelated to the key of our own, or, at any rate, +superfluous sixths, major sevenths, minor seconds;—now, as things are, +in this universal lack of unison and harmony, what can be expected but +a screeching cat-charivari—and, if we can’t have a little melody, we +must be content with a little <i>arpeggio-ing</i> up and down. +</p> + +<p> +By way of a fever for conversation, or pump-handle wherewith to force a +drop or two up from the heart, Leibgeber caught hold of Firmian’s hand, +and embraced it softly and warmly with all his fingers. He put one or +two unimportant questions concerning what walks and expeditions they +should think of for the day. But he had not foreseen that this +hand-clasp would be the means of landing him in deeper difficulties of +embarrassment,—for he found that it was now incumbent on him to keep a +control on his <i>hand</i> as well as on his tongue—and he couldn’t let +Firmian’s hand drop all in a moment, like a hot potato, but found it +necessary to let it out of his clasp by a gradual <i>diminuendo</i>. This +species of careful watch over his feelings was a process which made +Leibgeber blush with shame, and drove him nearly frantic; and, indeed, +he would have thrown even this description of mine of it into the fire. +I am given to understand that he never could bring himself to utter the +word “heart” even to women—who always have their <i>heart</i> (namely the +word) on their tongues, like a kind of <i>globus hystericus</i>. He said, +“It is the bullet-screw of their real hearts,—the button on their +fanfoil; and, to <i>me</i>, it is a poison <i>bolus</i>, a pitch-ball for the +Bel +of Babel.” +</p> + +<p> +So his hand escaped, on a sudden, from its close arrest; he seized his +hat and stick, and cried: “I see you are just as great a goose as I am +myself: <i>instanter</i>, <i>instantius</i>, <i>instantissime</i>, in three +words, did +you talk to her about the Widows’ Fund? Yes or no—not another +syllable. I go Out at that door this instant!” Siebenkæs brought out +all his items of news on this subject as rapidly as possible, so as to +be quit of each and all of them for ever. “She is certain to agree to +it. I said nothing to her about it. I <i>can</i> NOT. But <i>you</i> can quite +easily. And you must. I am going no more to Fantasie. And we shall have +a grand time of it this afternoon, Heinrich! The music of our lives +shall be of a sounding sort. The pedals of the joy-notes are all ready +on our harps to be pressed down; and we’ll press them!” Heinrich, +partly recovering his equanimity, said, as he went out, “The Cremona +strings of the human instrument are made of living membrane, the breast +is only the sounding board—and the head is the damper.” +</p> + +<p> +Solitude lay around our friend like some beautiful country—all the +echoes, driven away from him, and wandering, lost and astray, could +find their way back to him now athwart it. And on the crape-veil, woven +of the twelve past hours, which had laid itself over his life’s +loveliest historical picture, he could tremblingly trace that +picture’s lines with crayon-pencil, and trace, and trace them over +again, a thousand and a thousand times! But a visit to the beautiful +Fantasie—blooming richer and fairer as the hours went by—this he must +deny himself; for he must not be a <i>living</i> hedge, to fence and bar +Nathalie from that Valley of Blossom. He must pay for bliss with +privation. The charms of the town and neighbourhood had still their +bright, many-tinted skins—but their sweet kernels were gone. +Everything was to him as some dessert dish which had, in the older +time, had coloured sugar sprinkled over it, which was now, somehow, +turned to coloured sand. All his hopes—all the flowers and fruit of +his life (as is the case with our higher ones)—now grew and matured +beneath the ground, like those of the subterranean vetch;<a name="div2Ref_78" href="#div2_78"><sup>[78]</sup></a> I mean, +in the sham grave into which he was going. How little he had—and yet, +how much! His feet were upon prickly rose branches, and all round the +Elysian fields of his future he saw thorny bushes, bristly undergrowth, +and a wall built, beginning at his grave. His Leipzig rose valley was +dwindled into the one green rosebud-twig, which had been transplanted, +unblown, from Nathalie’s heart to his. And yet, how much he <i>had</i>. A +forget-me-not, from Nathalie, for all his life to come (the silken ones +she gave him were but the hulls of that whose blossom was immortal and +eternal); a springtime in his soul at last, at last after all these +many springs—to be <i>so</i> beloved, for the first time by a woman as an +hundred dreams and poets had pictured to him that men <i>might</i> be +beloved. To pass, in an instant, at a single step, from his dingy +lumber room of old law papers and books into the fresh, green, flowery, +golden age of love,—for the first time, not only to gain a rare and +priceless love like this, but to take away with him <i>such</i> a parting +kiss, like a sun into all his coming life, to light and warm it through +and through for ever! <i>This</i> was bliss for one who had had his cross to +bear in former days. But, more than this, he was free to let himself be +borne along upon the beauteous waves of this river of Eden without care +or constraint, inasmuch as Nathalie never could be his, nor should he +ever see her more. In Lenette he had loved no Nathalie as in the latter +no Lenette. His wedded love was a prosaic summer day of sultry +hay-making, but <i>this</i> was a poetic spring night of starlight and +flowers, and his new world was like the name of the spot where it was +created—Fantaisie. He did not deceive himself as to the fact that, as +he was going to die before Nathalie, he was loving, in her, merely a +departed spirit, and that <i>as</i> a departed spirit—nay, while yet in +this life, of a truth, for <i>him</i>, a pure and glorified risen soul; and +he freely put the question to himself whether there were any reason why +he should not love this Nathalie (thus departed into the past, for +<i>him</i>) as truly and fondly as any other, departed long since into a yet +remoter past—the Heloise of an Abelard or St. Preux, or a poet’s +Laura, or a Werther’s Lotte for whom his dying was not even to be as +real as Werther’s. +</p> + +<p> +With all his efforts, he could not manage to say more to Leibgeber +than, “She must have been very, very fond of <i>you</i>, this rare, +exceptional soul—for it is only to my resemblance to you that I can +ascribe her heavenly kindness to <i>me</i>—who am so little like other +men—and have never been cared for by women.” Leibgeber—and he himself +as soon as he said it—laughed at this almost idiotic statement; but +what is any and every lover, during his May month, but a dear, genuine, +simple sheep? +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber soon came back to the hotel with the news that he had seen +the English lady on her way to Fantaisie. Firmian was very glad of it. +She rendered his resolve to shut himself out of the entire circle of +delight easier to execute. For she was the Count von Vaduz’s daughter, +and consequently must not see him (Siebenkæs) at present, having to +believe him hereafter to be Leibgeber. Heinrich botanised, however, the +whole day on the flowery slope of Fantaisie, with the view of +discovering and observing the flower <i>goddess</i>, rather than the +flowers, with his botanical glasses (to wit, his eyes). But no goddess +appeared. Alas! our poor wounded Nathalie had <i>so many</i> reasons for +keeping aloof from the ruins of her loveliest hours—for fleeing the +scene of conflagration (now overgrown with flowers) where she might +encounter him whom she meant to meet no more. +</p> + +<p> +A few days after this, the Venner Rosa von Meyern honoured the company +at the <i>table d’hôte</i> in the ‘Sun’ with <i>his</i>.... If the author’s +calculations as to dates do not wholly mislead him, he was at +dinner there on that occasion himself. But I have only an indistinct +recollection of the two advocates, and none at all of the +Venner—because coxcombs of his description are an uninteresting +species of animals, and there are whole game-preserves and zoological +gardens full of them to be met with at all times. I have more than once +met with characters, in the body, whom I have subsequently taken +careful wax casts of from the crowns of their heads to the soles of +their boots, and then exhibited them about the country in my collection +of wax-work figures. But I wish I always knew beforehand exactly +<i>which</i> of the people whom I happen to be dining or travelling with +chances to be the one who is going to have his portrait painted in this +way. I should note down, and store up a thousand trifling, minute +peculiarities, and lay them down in my epistolary cellars. As it is, I +sometimes find myself obliged (and I confess it freely) to set to work +and <i>coolly lie</i> a number of matters of minor importance—for instance, +that a thing takes place about six o’clock, or about seven—if I happen +to be wholly without documentary evidence on the point. Wherefore it is +a moral certainty that if three other authors had sat down, on the same +morning with me, to give the world an account of Siebenkæs’s wedded +life derived from the same historical sources as mine, that we four, +however great our devotion to truth, would have produced family +histories containing much the same amount and description of inaccuracy +as we find in those which the four Evangelists have given us; so that +our tetrachord would have stood in need of a good tuning with a +tuning-pipe in the shape of a “Harmony” of our Gospels. +</p> + +<p> +Meyern dined at the ‘Sun,’ as we have said. He told Siebenkæs with a +triumph, which was not without a dash of menace, that he was going back +to Kuhschnappel next day. He was vainer than ever—probably he had +offered his hand to some fifty of the fair sex of Bayreuth, as though +he had been the giant Briareus, with fifty wedding-rings on his hundred +hands. He was as greedy of the fair sex as cats are of <i>marum verum</i>; +which is why both are surrounded with <i>metallic</i> guards by their +possessors. When the clergy rivet poachers of this description, +alive, to one particular animal of their chase by means of a strong +wedding-ring, and the animal of the chase in question drags them +through every thicket till they are scratched and bled to death, +philanthropic weekly-papers would say that it is too severe a +punishment; and it is so, no doubt, for the poor animal of the chase. +</p> + +<p> +On the following day Rosa really did send to ask whether Siebenkæs had +any message to send to his wife, as he was going back to see her. +</p> + +<p> +Nathalie was invisible still. All that Firmian saw of her was a letter +for her which he saw shaken out of the post-bag when he went (as he did +every day) to see if there was one from his wife. Lenette did not +require more hours to write a letter than Isocrates did years for a +panegyric on the Athenians—no more, but just the same number, namely +about ten. Judging by the handwriting and the seal, the letter for +Nathalie was from the (step) father of his country, Herr von Blaise. +“Thou darling girl,” thought Firmian, “with what deliberation he will +pass the burning focus of his burning-glass (formed of the ice of his +heart) over every wound of thy soul! How many secret tears wilt thou +weep—and no one to count them; and thou hast no hand now to dry them +and hide them, except thine own!” +</p> + +<p> +One exquisite, blue afternoon he went alone to the only pleasure garden +which was not barred against him—the Hermitage. Memories met him every +where—all painfully sweet memories. At every spot he had lost, or +renounced, something of life or heart—had become a hermit, in +accordance with the place’s name. Could he forget the great, dim glade +where, beside his kneeling friend, and before the setting sun, he had +sworn to die, and part from his wife and from all the world he knew? +</p> + +<p> +He left the joy-place, turned his face to the setting sun (which almost +hid, in its brightness, the prospect from his sight), and strolled in +circles round the town. With a deeply moved heart he gazed after the +gently radiant luminary as it sank, amid the glowing cloud-embers, +towards that distant spot where his widowed Lenette would be standing +in her silent room, with her face lighted up by the evening red. “Ah! +dear, good Lenette,” the voice within him cried, “why can I not press +thee to this full, tender heart, here in this paradise, in bliss? I +should love thee better here, and forgive thee easier.” +</p> + +<p> +Yes, of a truth, it is thou, kind Nature—never ending Love, who +changest, in us, distance of body into nearness of soul. It is thou +who, when we are utterly happy in some distant spot, bringest to us +from afar, in fancy, the beloved forms of those whom we have had to +leave—they come like beautiful music, or like happy years—and we +stretch out our arms to the clouds that go soaring over the hills +beyond which lie the dwellings of those whom we love the best. Our +severed hearts open to those distant ones as the flowers which open to +the sun unfold their petals even on days when there are clouds between +them. +</p> + +<p> +The splendour died away, leaving the blood-like track of the sunken sun +in the blue; the earth with her gardens seemed to stand out brighter +and clearer. Then suddenly Firmian came on the green Tempè Vale of +Fantaisie, lying before him all loveliness of sight and of sound, +tinted with the red of the evening clouds and with the white of +blossoming boughs. But over it stood an angel with a gleaming cloud +streak for sword, saying, “Here enter thou not! Knowest thou not the +Eden from whence thou hast gone out?” +</p> + +<p> +Firmian turned him about, and there, in the gloaming of spring, leaned +upon the wall of the first of the Bayreuth houses he reached on his +homeward way; so that the wounds of his eyes might have a chance to +grow whole—that he might not meet his friend bearing scars which would +have to be “explained.” Leibgeber was not in, however, but there was +something there of a very unexpected kind—a letter from Nathalie to +him. +</p> + +<p> +Ye who have keenly felt—or deeply regretted—that there is a +Moses-veil, an altar-railing, a prison-grating, made both of body +and earth—stretched out for ever and aye, between one soul and +another—<i>ye</i> cannot well blame this poor, deep-touched, solitary +FRIEND, that he took up the cold paper unseen, and pressed it to his +burning lips, and to his trembling heart. For of a truth, every +<i>body</i>—even the human body, is, from the soul’s point of view, +merely the sacred <i>reliquiæ</i> of an invisible spirit; and not only the +letter, which you kiss, but the hand which wrote it, too, is, like the +lips, whose kiss <i>you think</i>, assures you—(but it is a deceptive +assurance)—of the <i>closeness</i> of your union, your <i>flowing</i> or +<i>fusing</i> into one, only the sacred outward and visible sign of a +something higher and dearer; and these deceptions differ only in their +sweetness. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber came in, opened the letter, and read it aloud: +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow morning at five o’clock, I shall be turning my back upon +your beautiful town. I am going to Schraplau. But I cannot leave this +lovely valley, oh dear friend, without once again giving you the +assurance of my unchanging friendship, and conveying to you my thanks +and wishes for yours. I should so have liked to say good-bye to you in +a more living manner; but my long leave-taking from my English friend +is not yet over, and I have now <i>her</i> wishes to combat (as I had my +<i>own</i> before) before I can bury myself in, or rather, wing my flight to +my village solitude. This beautiful spring has sorely wounded me, and +that with joys as well as with sorrows. But (if I may go so far afield +for a comparison), my heart, like Cranmer’s, is left for those I love, +unconsumed amid the ashes of my funereal pyre. May all go well! well! +with you—better than can ever be the case with me, a woman. Fate +cannot take much from you, nay, nor give you much either. There are +smiling eternal rainbows playing around <i>all</i> the waterfalls for you; +but the rain-clouds of a woman’s heart must drop for many a long day ere +they are brightened by the sad, yet cheering tints of the Iris which +memory casts upon them at length. <i>Your</i> friend is with you still, no +doubt. Press him warmly to your heart, and tell him, all that <i>yours</i> +wishes, and <i>gives</i> him, mine <i>wishes</i> him; and never will he, or you, +whom he loves, be forgotten by me. Always +</p> + +<p class="right">“Your <span style="letter-spacing:10px"> </span><span class="sc">Nathalie</span>.” +</p> + +<p> +During the reading of this, Firmian stood with his face pressed to the +window, and lifted towards the evening sky. Heinrich, with a true +friend’s delicacy of perception, took the answer out of his lips, and +said, looking to him, “Yes, this Nathalie is good and kind, in very +truth, and a thousand times better than thousands of other people are; +but I will let myself be driven over by her carriage, and crushed +beneath the wheels of it, if I don’t wait for her at four o’clock in +the morning, get into the carriage, and sit down beside her. Ay, +verily! I will get her to lend me both her ears, and I will fill them +full—or my own are longer than any elephant’s, though he <i>does</i> use +his for fly-flappers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, do, dear Henry,” said Firmian, in the most cheerful tones he +could force from his oppressed throat. “I shall give you three lines to +take in your hand, just that you may have something to give her, since +I am never to see her again.” +</p> + +<p> +There is a certain lyric intoxication of heart, during which people +never ought to write letters, because, in the course of fifty years or +so they may, perhaps fall into the hands of people who are without +either the heart or the intoxication. However, Firmian wrote, and did +not seal; and Leibgeber did not read. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> bid you farewell, too! But <i>I</i> cannot say ‘Don’t forget me.’ Ah! +forget me! But leave me the forget-me-not which you gave me—to keep +for evermore. Though Heaven is past and over, death has yet to come. +And mine is now very near, and it is for this reason alone that I, and +my dear Leibgeber even more urgently, have a favour to beg of you; but +such a <i>strange</i> favour. Nathalie, do not refuse. Your soul’s sphere is +far, far above that of the feminine souls which are shocked and +frightened at everything out of the commonplace track. <i>You</i> can dare, +and can venture, nor need you fear to risk that great heart of yours +(and happiness) on any cast. And now, as I spoke to you on <i>that</i> +night, for the last time, this is the last time I shall write to you. +</p> + +<p> +“But Eternity remains for thee and me! +</p> + +<p class="right">“F. S.” +</p> + +<p> +His sleep was nothing but dreams all night, that he might be sure to +awaken Leibgeber in the morning. But as early as three o’clock, the +latter, in his capacity of letter-carrier, and <i>Maître des Requêtes</i>, +was posted under a great linden-tree, whose hanging beds, thronged with +a sleeping world of inhabitants, overhung the alley by which Nathalie +was to come. Firmian, in bed, enacted Henry’s part along with him, in +fancy, thinking to himself, “Now she is bidding the English lady +good-bye; now she is getting into the carriage; now she is passing the +tree, and he is taking her horses by the bridle.” He phantasised +himself into dreams which stabbed his heart with pictures of her +repeated refusals of his petition. What a quantity of dark and cloudy +weather is born of one single, bright, starry night, in the physical +world as well as in the moral. At last he dreamed that she stretched +her hand to him, from her carriage, with tears in her eyes, and the +green rose-twig on her breast, and said, in low sweet tones, “I <i>must</i> +say no! Could <i>I</i> live long, if <i>you</i> were dead?” She pressed his hand +so warmly that he awoke. The pressure was there, and lasted, and before +him was the beaming daylight, and his beaming friend, who said, “She +has agreed, while you’ve been snoring here.” +</p> + +<p> +He had been within a hair’s breadth of missing her. She had not taken +so much time to dress and depart as others do to <i>un</i>dress and arrive. +A rose-branch, wet with dew, whose leaves pricked sharper than its +thorns, was on her heart, and the long parting had tinted her lids with +red. She was delighted to see him, though a little frightened, and +anxious to hear. He gave her Firmian’s open letter, to begin with, by +way of credential. Her eager eyes shone out once more through two +tear-drops, and she asked, “What am I to do?” “Nothing,” said +Leibgeber, in an artful manner, half jest, half earnest, “except allow +the Prussian Treasury to remind you of his death twice a-year, as if +you were his widow.” She answered, “No!” pronouncedly, on one note, +behind which, however, there was only a comma, not a full stop. He once +more went through his petitions, and his reasons, adding, “Do it, at +least, for <i>my</i> sake, if for no other reason. I can’t bear to see him +baulked of a wish, or disappointed in a hope. He is a bear whom that +bear-leader, the State, keeps dancing all the winter, without a wink of +winter sleep, whereas <i>I</i> seldom take my paw out of my mouth, but suck +away continually. He kept awake all last night, so as to make sure of +calling me in time, and he is counting the moments anxiously at home +now.” She read the letter again, syllable by syllable. He did not ask +for a final answer, but spun out a talk on other subjects—the morning, +her journey, the village of Schraplau. The morning had already raised +her pillar of fire beyond Bayreuth, the town kept adding pillars of +smoke; in a few minutes he must out of the carriage and back. “And so, +fare you well,” he said, in the softest of tones, with one foot on the +carriage-step; “may your future grow brighter and brighter, like the +day about us. And now, <i>what</i> last word am I to carry to my <i>good</i>, +<i>dear</i> beloved Firmian?” (I shall make a remark in a minute or two.) +She lowered her travelling-veil like the drop curtain of a drama which +is done, and said in low and stifled accents, “If I must, I must; so +let <i>this</i> be, also. But you are giving me <i>another</i> great sorrow to +take with me on my way.” Here he jumped down, and the carriage, bearing +this poor soul—poor now in so many ways—rolled on with her over the +shattered ruins of her youthful life. +</p> + +<p> +If he had got a “No” instead of this hard wrung-out “Yes,” he would +have caught her again on the other side of the town, and been her +fellow-traveller for another fragment of her journey. +</p> + +<p> +I said above, that I should “make a remark;” it is this: that the +friendship or love which a woman has for a man is fed by that which she +sees existing between him and his friends, and grows visibly in +consequence—converting it, polyp-fashion, into its own substance. It +was for this reason that Leibgeber, by instinct, had given such warm +expression to <i>his</i>. In the case of us, masculine lovers, again, this +sort of electric coating, or magnetic armature of our love with the +friendship of our beloved object with other women is most uncommon. +What pleases <i>us</i>, is to see her shrinking from everybody else, growing +hard and frozen to them on our account, handing <i>them</i> nothing but ices +and cold pudding, but serving us with glowing goblets of love. This +process of making the heart, like wine, more fiery and strong, +and generous, by freezing it at the boiling-point, may please a +short-sighted selfish soul; but never a clear-seeing, kindly, loving +one. At all events, the author declares that, whenever <i>he</i> has caught +a glimpse—in a mirror or in water—of the reverse side of the +Janus-head, of which the other side has been smiling in love upon him, +frowning in dislike upon the rest of the world, he has made a face or +two of the same disliking sort on the spot—at the Janus-head. For the +mere contrast’s sake, a girl should never slander, find fault, or +dislike, at all events, while she is a lover; when she is a married +woman, the mistress of a house, and has children, and cows, and +servants, of course no reasonable man or husband, can possibly object +to a moderate amount of bad temper, and a little scolding now and then. +</p> + +<p> +Nathalie had acceded to the strange proposal for many reasons; just +because it <i>was</i> a strange one; and then the word “widow” would, to her +romantic heart, be constantly weaving a mourning-band of sorrow, +binding her and Firmian together, and winding in charming and fanciful +wreaths round the events, and the vows, of the night of their good-bye. +Besides, to-day, she had been gradually ascending from one emotion to +another, and had reached a height where her head began to reel. +Moreover, she was boundlessly unselfish, and consequently never +troubled herself to think whether a thing had the <i>appearance</i> of +selfishness or not. And, lastly, she cared less about appearances in +general, and the conclusions people drew from them than, perhaps, a +young lady <i>should</i> care. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber, now that all his goals were reached, emitted a long, +gladsome zodiacal light; and Firmian did not darken it with the full +depth of his mourning night shadow, but only with the half-tints +thereof. At the same time, he felt he could not visit either of +Bayreuth’s pleasure-places, Eremitage or Fantaisie, which were +Herculaneum and Portici to him now. Yet he <i>must</i> pass by the latter on +his homeward way, and disinter many things that were buried. He did not +care to delay his return much longer; not only was the moon set now, +which had shed a new silvery radiance upon all the white flowers and +blossoms of the spring, but Leibgeber, besides, was a death’s head +<i>memento mori</i>, always saying, in the most unmistakable manner—though +with neither lips nor tongue—“It must be borne in mind that thou hast +got to die, in Kuhschnappel, in jest.” Leibgeber’s heart burned for the +world without, the flames of his forest-conflagration were eager to +dart and play uncontrolled over alps, islands, capital cities; the +Vaduz water reservoir of acts of parliament—paper <i>lit-de-parade</i> and +<i>lit-de-justice</i>—would have been to <i>him</i> a heavy, suffocating, +feather-bed, such as people in a hopeless state of hydrophobia used to +be smothered by out of compassion. In fact, a small town could as +little endure him as he could endure a small town. Indeed, even in +Bayreuth—a larger place—there were sundry <i>Commissaires de Justice</i> +at the <i>table d’hôte</i> at the ‘Sun’ Hotel, who told me with their own +lips, that when Leibgeber spoke his table-speech (reported in Chapter +XII.) on the subject of Crown Princes, they thought it was a deliberate +satire on a particular Margrave then reigning; whereas all his satires +were really directed against the human race in <i>general</i>, not against +individuals. Again, how thoughtlessly he conducted himself during the +poor eight days which he spent in our good town of Hof im Voigtlande. +Are there not credible “Varisker” (as according to some authorities the +inhabitants of Voigtland were called in Cæsar’s time—though others +consider “Narisker” to have been the word), who have assured me that he +bought bergamot pears in the open market-place, near the court-house, +and cakes at a baker’s stall, in his best suit of Sunday clothes? And +are there not Nariskers of the fair sex, who, having observed his +proceedings thereafter, are ready to depose that, though stall-feeding +is a matter of universal enjoinment, he nevertheless ate this +food-offering in the open air like a prince, and on the march, like a +Roman army? There are witnesses, who waltzed with him, to testify that +he went to masked balls in a <i>robe de chambre</i> and a cocked-hat and +feathers, and that he had worn both all the previous day in earnest, +before putting them on in the evening in jest. A Narisker not without +some brains, and possessing a good memory, who was not aware that I had +the fellow under my historical hands, repeated the following somewhat +audacious utterances of Leibgeber’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Every man is a born pedant. There are very few who are hung in chains +<i>after</i> they are dead: but almost every one <i>is</i> hung, in most +accursed +chains, <i>before</i> death; and, therefore, in most countries, ‘Freeman’ +means provost-marshal, or hangman. Jest, as such, ought to be serious; +therefore, as long as one is only in jest, it is wrong to jest in the +slightest degree. He held, that the spirit which brooded, creating, +over the ink of colleges was (as many Fathers of the Church held that +to be which, according to Moses, moved upon the face of the waters) +<i>wind</i>. In his eyes, worshipful councils, conferences, deputations, +sessions, processions, &c., were not, at bottom, wholly without a spice +of comic salt, looked upon as grave parodies of stiff and empty +seriousness, more especially as in general there was but one member of +the conclave (or perhaps his wife) who really voted, decided, or ruled, +the mystic <i>corpus</i> itself, sitting at the green table, chiefly for the +joke of the thing; just as, in flute clocks, though there is a +flute-player screwed on outside whose fingers work up and down upon the +flute, which grows out of his mouth, and children are beyond themselves +with delight at the talent of the wooden imposition, every clockmaker +knows that it is <i>inside</i> that the wheels are which act on the hidden +pipes with their pinions.” I answered that these sayings showed that +Leibgeber was of a rather audacious and ironical turn of mind. It is, +perhaps, to be desired, that everybody were in a position to do what +the author does in this place, namely, beg all Nariskers to have the +goodness to point to any single word or deed of his which can be called +satirical, or not exactly adapted to fit on to the cap-block of a <i>pays +coutumier</i>. If he is not speaking the truth, he begs that he may be +contradicted without the slightest hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +The winnowing-fan which blew Siebenkæs out of Bayreuth on the following +day, was a letter from the Count von Vaduz, in which he expressed his +friendly regret on account of Leibgeber’s cold-fever and tallowy +appearance, at the same time begging him to hasten his entry upon the +duties of his office. This letter was to Siebenkæs as a wing-membrane +wherewith to hasten his flight to his seeming cocoon-grave, in order to +issue forth from it a young full-fledged inspector. In our next chapter +he turns him about, and quits the beautiful town. In what remains of +this, he is taking private lessons in silhouette clipping from +Leibgeber, whose <i>rôle</i> he is to succeed to by dying. The +master-cutter, and scissorial-mentor did nothing, in this connection, +worthy of being handed down to posterity by me save one thing, as to +which I do not find a word in my documents, which was told me by Mr. +Feldmann, the keeper of the hotel, who was carving at table when it +occurred. It was only that a stranger who was dining there clipped out +a profile of Leibgeber, among others; while Leibgeber, seeing what he +was about, clipped out, under cover of the table-cloth, a silhouette of +this supernumerary copyist’s <i>own</i> head and shoulders, and when the +latter handed him his, Leibgeber returned the compliment, saying “<i>al +Pari</i>!” thus paying him in his own coin. This stranger made airs of +various kinds, as well as silhouettes, but succeeded best with the +<i>phlogistic</i> sort, which he made with his lungs, without any difficulty +to speak of, and in which he throve and took on colour, as plants do; +this sort of air can be breathed, and is designated by the name of +“wind,” to distinguish it from the other phlogistic gases which can not +be inhaled. When this phlogistic wind-maker (who gave admirable +lectures from town to town, on the other gases, from that portable +professorial chair, his body) had departed with his cutter’s wages, +Heinrich contented himself with the following remarks. +</p> + +<p> +“Thousands of people ought to travel and teach both at once. He who +limits himself to three days can certainly (as a species of private +tutor extraordinary) in that time read excellent lectures on every kind +of subject which he knows little or nothing about. Thus much I +see already, that there are brilliant comets—shining wandering +stars—revolving round me and others, and throwing flying lights upon +us concerning electricity, gases, magnetism, in short natural science +in general; but this is but a small matter. May this duck’s wing choke +me if these rostrum carriers, and travelling professors (travelling +scholars they are not), might not lecture upon science of <i>every</i> kind, +with great advantage, at all events, upon the minuter branches. Could +not <i>one</i>, for instance, travel and read lectures upon the first +century after Christ’s birth, or the first millenary before it (which +is no longer), I mean, tell ladies and gentlemen all about it in a +lecture or two, a second undertaking the second, a third the third, an +eighteenth our own? I can quite imagine travelling medicine-chests for +the soul of this kind. But as far as I am concerned, I should by no +means stop at this point—I should advertise myself as a peripatetic +private tutor in branches of the minutest possible order; <i>e. g</i>., in +electoral courts, I should give lessons concerning the obligations to +be entered into by the nominees to government appointments; in all and +every place I should give exegetical instruction concerning the first +verse of the first book of Moses—the <i>kraken</i>, the devil (who <i>may</i>, +perhaps, be more or less the same as the other), on Hogarth’s +tail-piece, in connection with Vandyke’s headpieces, on coins and in +portraits; on the true distinction between the Hippocentaur, and the +Onocentaur, which is more like that between genius and German criticism +than anything else; on the first paragraph of Wolf, or even of Pütter; +on the funeral bier of Louis (XIV.) the be-grandised, and the public +rejoicings under it; on the academic licences which a passing +lecturer may allow himself to take, in addition to that of pocketing +his fee—the greatest of which is often that of shutting the +lecture-room door, (to make a long story short) on <i>everything</i>, in +fact. If we go on in this way (I can’t help being struck), that +when circulating high schools have got to be as common as village +schools—when savants ply backwards and forwards like live shuttles +between the towns (and they have begun to do so already), attaching +Ariadne threads (of <i>talk</i>, at all events) everywhere, to everything, +with the view of weaving them into something or other—if we go on on +this road, I say, when each sun of a professor—on the Ptolemaic +system, moves about among the dark orbs (fixed upon necks), which +surround him, and casts his light upon each in turn (a state of things +wholly opposed to the Copernican system, according to which the sun +stands still on the professorial rostrum in the centre of the orbits of +the revolving planets or students)—if we go on (I say once more, on +this road), one may be pretty sure that the world will really come +to be something at last; a <i>learned</i> world, at the very least and +lowest—philosophers will obtain the true philosopher’s stone—gold; +what fools will obtain will be the philosophers, and knowledge of every +kind: and moreover the restorers of science will get set upon <i>their</i> +legs. All soil would then be classic soil—so that people would of +necessity have to plough, and fight on, classic soil. Every gallows +hill would be a Pindus, every prince’s throne an oracle-cave of +Delphi—and I should be obliged to anyone who should show me such a +thing as a single ass in the whole of Germany, <i>then</i>. This is what +would necessarily happen if all the world were to set out upon learned, +and instructive, journeys—that portion of it being, of course, +necessarily excepted which would be obliged to stay at home if there +were to be anybody to listen and pay (like the <i>point de vue</i>, in +military ‘evolutions,’ for which the adjutant is generally told off).” +</p> + +<p> +Here he suddenly jumped up, and cried, “I wish to Heaven I could go to +Bruckenau;<a name="div2Ref_79" href="#div2_79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> there, on the bath tubs, should be my professorial +chair, and seat of the Muses. The tradesman’s, the country gentleman’s +wife or daughter should lie, like a shell fish, in her closed basin and +relic-casquet, with nothing sticking out but her head (just as is the +case in her ordinary costume), her head which it would be my business +to instruct. What discourses, <i>à la</i> St. Anthony of Padua, should I not +hold with these tender tench—or sirens—though they might better be +described as fortresses protected by moats, or wet ditches. I should +sit lecturing and teaching upon the wooden holsters of their glowing +charms (phosphorus-like, kept in water!) But this would be nothing +compared to the benefits I should bestow upon society were <i>I</i> to have +<i>my</i>self cooped into an <i>etui</i>, or scabbard of the kind, and then be +net a-going like a water-organ, and, like some water-god, devote my +pedagogical talents to the edification of the class of students sitting +on my tub-lid! True, I should have to make my illustrative gestures +under the warm water, because the only part of me out of my sheath +would be my head (like the hilt of a dagger), with my master’s cap on +it. But the loveliest of doctrine,—luxuriant rice-ears, and succulent +aquatic plants sprouting in the water—a play of philosophic +water-works, and so forth, should be emitted from the bath, and send +away all the beauties (whom, in fancy, I see thronging round my +quaker’s and Diogenes’ tub) besprinkled with learning and instruction +of the most superlative description. By Heaven! I ought to be off to +Bruckenau this instant, not so much as a watering-place guest as in the +capacity of a private tutor.” +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<p class="center">THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY, WITH ALL ITS PLEASURES—THE ARRIVAL AT HOME. +</p> + +<p> +Firmian took his departure. He was sorry to leave the hotel, which had +been a royal “Sans Souci” and “mon repos” to him, and turn his face +away from its comfortable chambers towards his own bare comfortless +rooms. To him who had never known any of the comforts—the soft +<i>paddings</i>, so to speak, of this hard life of ours—who had never had +any other Jack but the boot-jack, it had been an enormous pleasure and +enjoyment to have the power of ringing that leading actor, John the +waiter, up from his <i>coulisses</i> with such facility, and that too with +plates and glasses in his hand, out of which said actor enjoyed +nothing, only Siebenkæs and the public so doing. Just at the door of +the hotel, he made to Mr. Feldmann, the landlord, the following +eulogistic address, which shall be made him once more in print by me, +by way of an additional blazon to his coat of arms, the moment it gets +through the press. “There is only one thing which your guests have to +desire, that they have not got, and that is the most important of all +things—time. May your sun reach the sign of the crab, and remain in +it.” Several Bayreuthians who were standing by thought this was a +miserable satire. +</p> + +<p> +Henry went with Firmian some thirty paces beyond the Reformation +church, as far as the church-yard, and tore himself away from him with +less difficulty than usual, for he expected to see him again in a few +weeks’ time—on his death-bed. He would not go as far as Fantaisie with +him, wishing to allow him to sink, in silence and undisturbed, and lose +himself in the enjoyment of the magic echoes of the spirit-harmonies of +that night of bliss wherewith all the garden would be vocal. +</p> + +<p> +Alone, then, Firmian entered into the valley as into some holy temple, +all sacredness and awe. Every thicket seemed, to his eyes, glorified +with super-earthly light, the stream, a stream flowing out of Arcadia, +and the whole valley a Vale of Tempè, transported thither and unveiled +to view. And when he came to the dear and holy spot where Nathalie had +prayed him to “think of that night,” it seemed to him that the sun was +shedding a heavenlier brightness; and that the hum of bees in the +blossoms was music of spirit-voices wafted on the air, and that he must +needs prostrate himself and press his heart upon the dewy sward. Upon +this trembling sound-board he once more retraced the old path by which +he had walked with Nathalie, and, now in a rose espalier, now from some +streamlet, now from the balcony, now from some leafy nook or trembling +stem, string after string, breaking from silence, gave forth once more +its old lovely tone. His enraptured heart swelled, even to pain; a +moist transparent shimmer was over his eyes, and dissolved into a great +tear-drop. His eyes, drunken with weeping, distinguished nothing save +the brightness of the morning and the whiteness of the flowers; details +were hid by the flowery vail of dreaming, in whose lily perfume his +soul sank down, soothed to a restful sleep. It was as if hitherto, in +the enjoyment of being with his Leibgeber he had only felt half the +real strength of his love for Nathalie; with such a new might and +breeze of heaven did that love come breathing upon him in this solitude +with ethereal tire. A world all youth burst into blossom in his heart. +</p> + +<p> +Of a sudden the bells of Bayreuth came ringing into this world, +striking for him the hour of his farewell to it; and there fell on him +that anxious sadness with which we linger, too long, beside a place +where we have been happy, when the time has come when we must say +Adieu. He went upon his way. +</p> + +<p> +What a brightness fell upon all the hills and meadows, with the thought +of Nathalie, and that imperishable kiss! The green world, which had +been but a series of pictures for him, as he came, was now all speech +and language. There was a light-magnet of happiness all day long in the +dimmest corner of his being; and when, in the thick of distractions, +conversations and the like, <i>en route</i>, he cast a sudden glance into +himself, he found a continual sense of blissfulness within him. +</p> + +<p> +How often he turned back to the Bayreuth hills, beyond which he had +lived real days of youth, for the first time in his existence! Behind +him Nathalie was journeying on towards the east, and breezes from that +quarter—airs which had breathed gently around the distant, lonely +one—came wafting back to him, and he drunk the æther-stream like the +breath of one beloved. +</p> + +<p> +The hills sunk low on the horizon; his paradise was whelmed in the blue +of heaven. His west and Nathalie’s east flowed asunder, and parted +wider, faster and faster as the moments sped. One beautiful plain +receded, flying behind him, after another; and he hastened past the +flower-decked limbs of Spring as she lay outstretched on earth, +alternating between looking and enjoying, as in early days gone by. +</p> + +<p> +Thus he came at evening to the village in the valley by the Jaxt, where +on his journey to Bayreuth, he had passed in review, with tears, his +loveless days; but he came with a new heart, full to the brim with love +and happiness; and tears flowed this time too. Here where, amid the +melting magic lights of evening, he had asked himself, “What womanly +soul has ever loved <i>you</i> as your old dreams have so often pictured to +your heart you <i>might</i> be loved by one,” and had given himself so sad +an answer; here he could think on that Bayreuth night, and say, “Yes! +Nathalie has loved me!” And then the old sorrow rose again, but +glorified, from the dead. He had made to her a vow of invisibility here +on earth; he was now journeying on towards his own death; he was to +die, and never see her more. She was gone before him—had <i>died</i> first, +as it were; she had merely taken away with her into the long, dim, +coming years of her life the grief of having loved and lost, <i>twice</i>. +“And I look into my own life here, and weep, away from her,” he said, +wearily, and closed his eyes undried. +</p> + +<p> +Another world altogether opened upon him in the morning—not a new +world by any means—the old, old familiar one. Just as if the +concentric magic circles which surrounded Nathalie and Leibgeber +reached no further than the little Valley of Longing on the Jaxt, and +could include nothing beyond it. Every step towards home translated the +poetry which had come into his life to poetic prose. The Imperial +market-town (that frigid zone of his life) was nearer to him; his +torrid zone, over which the faded petals of his ephemeral joy-flowers +were fluttering still, was far away behind him. +</p> + +<p> +But, on the other hand, the pictured imagery of his domestic life kept +growing clearer and brighter, taking the form of a picture-bible, while +the paintings of his month of bliss died away into a dark picture +gallery. I think the weather, which was rainy, had some connection with +this. +</p> + +<p> +Towards the end of the week the weather, as well as penitents and +churchgoers, puts on other shirts and clothes. +</p> + +<p> +It was Saturday, and cloudy. Damp weather affects the walls of our +brains as it does the walls of our rooms; the paperings of both imbibe +the moisture, and get curled up into clouds, until the next dry day +smooths both out again. Under a blue sky, I long for eagles’ pinions; +under a cloudy one, I only want a goose’s wing to write with. In the +former case we are eager to be off and out, into the wide world; in the +latter, all we want is to sit comfortably down in our arm-chair. In +short, clouds, when they drop, make us domestic, citizenish, and +hungry, while blue skies make us thirsty, and citizens <i>of the world</i>. +</p> + +<p> +These clouds of this Saturday formed a kind of palisade about the Eden +of Bayreuth. Every big drop which fell on the leaves made him think +longingly of the wifely, wedded heart, which was his lawful property +(and which he was soon to lose), and of his poor little lodging. At +last when the ice-floes of the rugged-clouds melted into grey foam, +and the setting sun was drawn like a sluice, out of this suspended +mill-pond, and it poured down in consequence, Kuhschnappel came in +sight. +</p> + +<p> +Discordant, jarring fancies clanged in contention within him. The +commonplace, narrow-minded, provincial town, seemed, when contrasted +with freer and more liberal places and societies, so crowded and +crushed together, so official in style, and full of Troglodytes—with +doggrel, and table-verses by way of poetry—that he felt it would be a +satisfaction to drag out his green trellis-bed into the market-place in +broad daylight, and go to sleep beneath the very windows of the local +“quality,” without minding a brass-farthing what the upper council +might think, or the lower council either. The nearer he came to the +stage he was to die upon, the more difficult did this first rôle of his +(and last but one) appear to him. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Away</i> from home we are bold and daring: we resolve, and undertake; +<i>at</i> home, we pause and hesitate, and delay. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, and the smoke and smells of the mean streets gnawed into him, +matters which, of themselves unaided, so sorely affect and depress us +that there are very few indeed who can raise their heads wholly beyond +these effluvia. For in man there nestles an accursed tendency towards +still-sitting ease and comfort; like a big dog he lets himself be poked +and pinched a thousand times before he takes the trouble to get up, +rather than growl. Once fairly on his legs, however, he is not in a +hurry to lie down again. The first heroic deed (like the first earned +dollar, according to Rousseau) costs more than the next thousand. The +prospect of the long, difficult, tedious and risky financial and +surgical operation of a stage death stung our Siebenkæs on the domestic +bolster. +</p> + +<p> +But the nearer he drew to the gallows-hill (that mouse-tower of his +old, narrow life), the quicker and the clearer did the thoughts of the +heart-oppressing stamping-mills of past days, and of his approaching +salvation, vibrate in alternation in his mind. He kept thinking that he +would have to suffer care, anxiety, and struggle of all sorts, as of +old, because he kept losing sight of the open sky of his future, just +as we go on suffering the pain and fear of a painful dream for some +time after we have awakened from it. +</p> + +<p> +But when he saw the house where dwelt his Lenette, whose voice he had +not heard for so many a day, the pain all vanished from his heart, the +trouble from his eyes, nothing being left in them but affection and its +warmest tears. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! am I not going to tear myself, so soon, from her for ever, and +make her shed tears of delusion, and wound her with the terrible wounds +of a funeral and mourning? and then, poor darling soul, we shall see +each other no more!” he thought. +</p> + +<p> +He quickened his pace. He squeezed close past the shop windows of his +co-commandant, Meerbitzer, with his head thrown back, and his eyes +fixed upon the up-stairs windows. Meerbitzer was in the house, +splitting the Sunday wood; and Firmian signed to him not to give note +of his presence by any sort of sentry-challenge. The old associate czar +signed back to him, with outstretched fingers, that Lenette was alone +in the room up-stairs. The old familiar ripieno voices of the house, +the querulous scolding of the book-binder’s wife, the damper-pedal +effect of the eternal prayer and curser, Fecht, met him like so much +sweet provender, as he climbed the stairs. The waning moon of his +movable pewter property shone silvery and glorious upon him from the +kitchen, everything fresh from its font of regeneration; a copper +fish-kettle, which poisoned no vinegar as long as it was unmended, +glowed upon him through the kitchen smoke like the sun in a November +fog. He opened the door of the sitting-room gently; he saw no one in +it, but heard Lenette making the bed in the bed-room. With a whole iron +foundry hammering in his breast, he made a long, noiseless stride into +the room, which was all in apple-pie order, with its Sunday shirt of +white sand on already (upon which the bed-making river goddess and +water nymph had expended all her aquatic arts in the production, of a +highly-finished masterpiece). Ah! everything was so full of rest and +peace, so tranquilly reposing after the whirl and turmoil of the week. +The rain stars had risen upon everything, except his ink bottle, which +was quite dry. +</p> + +<p> +His writing-table was, so to speak, <i>manned</i> by two or three large +heads, which, being cap-blocks, had on their Sunday bonnets, already, +which would be transferred from them in their capacity of <i>Curatores +Sexus</i>, next morning, to the heads of the ladies of the members of +council. +</p> + +<p> +He pushed the bed-room door wider open, and there, after this long +separation, he saw his dear wife, standing with her back to him. +</p> + +<p> +Just then he fancied he recognised Stiefel’s fulling-mill steps coming +up stairs; and, that he might pass his first minute on her heart unseen +by a stranger eye, he said twice, softly, “Lenette!” +</p> + +<p> +She started round, crying “Oh good gracious! is it you?” He had clasped +her in his arms, before she got these words out, and rested on her +kiss, saying, “Good evening, good evening, and how are you, and how +have you been?” +</p> + +<p> +His lips stifled the answers. But suddenly she pushed him back and +struggled out of his arms, while two other arms clasped him swiftly, +and a bass voice said, “Here am I as well; you are welcome back, praise +and thanks be to God.” It was the Schulrath. +</p> + +<p> +Poor, fevered human creatures that we are! driven back and repulsed +asunder by our own lackings, and those of others, yet continually drawn +together again by never-ceasing longings, in whom one hope of finding +love falls away to dust after another, whose wishes come to nothing but +<i>memories</i>. Our feeble hearts are at all events glowing and right full +of love in that hour when we <i>come back</i> and meet again; and in that +other hour when we part, disconsolate,—as every star seems milder, +larger, and lovelier when it is rising, than when it is overhead. But +to souls which <i>always</i> love, and are <i>never</i> angry, these two +twilights (when the morning star of meeting, and the evening star of +parting shine) are too sad to bear for to <i>them</i> they seem like +<i>nights</i>. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<p class="center">THE BUTTERFLY ROSA IN THE FORM OF MINING CATERPILLAR—THORN-CROWNS, +AND THISTLE-HEADS OF JEALOUSY. +</p> + +<p> +The last chapter was as brief as our delusions. It was one itself, +alas! poor Firmian. After the first stormy mutual catechisings, and +particularly, after the giving and receiving of all the mutual news, he +saw more and more clearly that Lenette’s invisible church, in which +Stiefel filled the part of soul’s bridegroom, was become very much of a +<i>visible</i> one. It was as if the earthquake of the recent happiness had +rent in twain the veil of the Holy of Holies, the inmost sanctuary, +wherein Stiefel’s head fluttered by way of cherub. But, to speak the +truth, I am telling a lie here, because it was Lenette’s special +<i>object</i> to <i>show</i> and <i>display</i> a <i>particular</i> liking for +the +Schulrath, who, in his delight thereat, went fluttering on from Arcadia +to Otaheite, and from thence to Eldorado, and from thence to Walhalla, +which was a certain indication, that, up to this point, his good +fortune, during Firmian’s absence, had been <i>less</i>. He related that, +“Rosa had broken with the Heimlicher; that the Venner, whom the latter +had wanted to utilise as a spinning machine, had turned into an engine +of war against him. The cause of all this had been the niece in +Bayreuth, whose engagement the Venner had broken off, because he had +caught her being kissed by a gentleman there.” +</p> + +<p> +Firmian grew red as fire, and cried “Miserable cockroach! It was <i>she</i> +who broke off her engagement with that wretched lying scoundrel, not +<i>he</i> who broke off his with her. Ah! Herr Schulrath, be that poor +lady’s true knight and champion, and run this wretched abortion of a +lie through and through wherever you came across it. From whom did you +get hold of this evil weed?” Stiefel pointed calmly to Lenette, saying, +“From <i>her</i>!” “And where did <i>you</i> get hold of it?” Firmian cried to +her in amazement. “Mr. Von Meyern,” she answered, with her face all +glowing red, “was here calling, and told it me himself.” “But I was +fetched immediately,” Stiefel interrupted, “and I skilfully sent him +about his business.” Stiefel then asked for a correct version of what +had happened. Firmian thereupon, timidly, and with many changes of +tone, made a highly favourable report of the rose-maiden and her +conduct of the matter (“rose-maiden” in a threefold sense, on account +of the roses in her cheeks, of her victorious virtue, and the green +rosebuds she had given to him). But on Lenette’s account he awarded her +a <i>proxima accessit</i> only, not the gold medal. He had to bind the +Venner, by way of sacrificial ram, to the horns of the altar in place +of Nathalie, or, at all events, harness him by way of saddle-horse to +her triumphal car, and relate without disguise how Leibgeber had been +the person who broke off the engagement, and, as it were, dragged her +back by the sleeve, as she was making the first step into the +Minotaur’s cave—by means of his satiric sketches of Meyern. +</p> + +<p> +“But it was <i>you</i>, of course,” said Lenette, <i>without</i> any tone of +interrogation, “who told Leibgeber all about him, to begin with.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +We of the human race give to words of one syllable, to “Yes,” and “No,” +at all events, more intonations, and shades of intonations, than the +Chinese themselves. The yes in question was a rapid, toneless, cold +yes, being merely meant for a “What then,” or “Suppose I did.” She +interrupted a digressive speech of Stiefel’s with a point-blank, +target, bull’s-eye question: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>When</i> had you been with her V” +</p> + +<p> +At last Firmian, with his battle-telescope, saw hostile movements of +all kinds going on in her heart; he made a playful diversion, and said, +“Herr Schulrath, <i>when</i> did you come to see Lenette?” +</p> + +<p> +“Three times every week at least, and, very often, oftener than that; +always about this time of the evening,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Very</i> well,” said Firmian, in a kindly and playful fashion. “I’m not +going to be jealous, but be good enough to remark—and my Lenette will +please to do so too—that <i>I</i> was with Nathalie, <i>along with Leibgeber, +twice</i> in all; once in the afternoon, once in the evening, walking +about the grounds of Fantaisie. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Lenette?” +</p> + +<p> +She parted her cherry lips, and her eyes were like Volta’s electric +condensers. +</p> + +<p> +Stiefel went away, and Lenette (from a countenance on which there +seemed <i>two</i> fires burning, the fire of anger and a lovelier fire) +flashed after him a spark of eye love, calculated to blow up the whole +powder-mill of a jealous husband. The married pair were scarce alone, +when, by way of propitiating her, he asked her if that confounded +Venner had been plaguing her again; and then the firework which had +been fixed ready on the scaffold of her face, went hissing off. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! of course <i>you</i> can’t endure him. You are jealous of him, on +account of this beautiful, <i>learned</i>, <span class="sc2">INTELLECTUAL</span>, Nathalie of yours. +Do you suppose I don’t know quite well about you and her going about a +whole night among the trees—and hugging and kissing! A pretty story! +Ah fie! I never would have believed it of you. No wonder Mr. Meyern +said ‘Good morning’ to her, learning and all. Oh yes! you’ll excuse +yourself, no doubt.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should have talked to you about all that most innocent affair,” +answered Firmian, tranquilly, “while Stiefel was here, if I had not +seen quite well that you knew of it. Am <i>I</i> annoyed because <i>he</i> +kissed +<i>you</i> while I was away?” +</p> + +<p> +This irritated her still more; firstly, because it was impossible +that Firmian could know of a certainty that it was true—(and it +<i>was</i>!),—and secondly, because she thought “You can forgive it very +easily now that you care more for another woman than you do for me.” +But then, for the self-same reason (inasmuch as <i>she</i> cared more for +another man than she did for <i>him</i>), <i>she</i>, of course, ought to have +found no difficulty in forgiving him too. But, as usual, instead of +answering his question, she put one herself: “Did <i>I</i> ever give anybody +silk forget-me-nots, as <i>somebody</i> did to <i>somebody</i>? Thank goodness! +mine are still in my drawer.” +</p> + +<p> +Here <i>two</i> hearts contended within him—a <i>tender</i> heart which was +pierced by this unintentional association of forget-me-nots so +dissimilar—and a <i>man’s</i> heart, which was powerfully stirred and stung +by this detestable defensive and offensive alliance with the fellow +who, as was evident now, had sent the innocent child, whom Nathalie had +rescued, to Fantaisie by way of a stalking-horse, behind which to +conceal and mask himself, and the toils he had spun. As Siebenkæs now, +with an outburst of anger, converted his judgment-seat into a stool of +repentance for the Venner, whom he stigmatised as a canker-worm of +feminine buds, a sparrowhawk, a housebreaker as regarded matrimonial +treasures, and a crimp, trepanner, and soul-stealer of mated +souls—vowing with the utmost warmth that it was Nathalie who had +scornfully sent Rosa to the right-about, not Rosa who had rejected her: +and as, of course, he interdicted her in the most peremptory terms from +everything in the nature of dissemination or repetition of the Venner’s +lying demi-romance, he turned his unfortunate wife into a sour, +pungent, Erfurt radish, from head to foot. +</p> + +<p> +Let us not fix our eyes too long, or too magisterially, upon this +heat-rash or purulent fever of poor Lenette’s. For my part, I am going +to leave <i>her</i> alone, but make an onslaught on her entire sex at once. +I shall be doing so, I trust, when I assert that women never paint with +more caustic colours (Swift’s black art is but weak water-colour in +comparison) than when they have to portray the bodily unlovelinesses of +other women. Further, that the prettiest of faces roughens and bristles +into an ugly one, when it expresses anger with the feminine recruiting +officer more than pity for the deserter. To speak accurately: Every +woman is jealous of all other women, because—not, perhaps, her own +husband (or lover, as the case may be), but—all other men are +attracted by them, and are consequently not true to <i>her</i>. Therefore +every woman takes the same vow concerning these vice-queens of this +earth that Hannibal took concerning the Romans, and keeps it just as +religiously. For which reason every woman has the power which Fordyce +says all animal bodies possess—that of making all others cold; and, +indeed, every woman must of necessity be an enemy and persecutor +of a sex which consists entirely of rivals. And it is probable that +many—for instance, nuns in their convents, and Moravians—call each +other sisters, or sister-souls, with the view of giving some sort of +expression to the nature of their sentiments for each other; since +sisters are just the very people who quarrel the most. This is why +Madame Bouillon’s <i>parties quarrées</i> consisted of three men and only +one woman. It may be that it led St. Athanasius, Basilius, Scotus, and +other teachers of the Church to entertain the belief that, with the +single exception of the Virgin Mary, all women would rise as men at the +Day of Judgment, in order that there may be no anger, or envy, or +bickerings in heaven. There is but one queen who is beloved, nourished +and cherished by many thousands of her own sex—the queen-bee of the +workers (who are of the feminine gender, according to the most recent +observations). +</p> + +<p> +I shall close this chapter with a sort of preliminary word for Lenette. +The foul fiend Rosa, by way of giving like for like (or rather <i>worse</i> +for like) had emptied whole basketsful of the seed of evil-weeds into +Lenette’s open heart, and unpacked compliments, to commence with, and +news of her husband; then, afterwards, disparaging matter. She had +believed him all the more readily because it was a clever, learned, and +intellectual woman whom he was nigrifying, breaking with, and offering +up as a sacrifice. What she most hated in Nathalie <i>was</i> her +cleverness, her learning, and intellectualness; for it was the want of +those that had brought <i>herself</i> to such shame. Like many women, she +thought that the <i>heads</i> of Venuses were not “the true article” (as +some connoisseurs think is the case with the Venus de Medici). What +provoked her most of all was that Firmian should take another woman’s +part more than his own wife’s—nay, at his own wife’s expense; and that +Nathalie, in her <i>conceit</i> and <i>pride</i>, had got ready a <i>sack</i> to +give +such a nice, <i>rich</i> gentleman, instead of weaving a <i>net</i> to hold him +with. She was also very much annoyed that her husband had <i>admitted</i> +everything, as she considered his candour was only lordly indifference +as to what she might feel on the subject. +</p> + +<p> +What did Firmian do? He forgave. His two reasons for doing so were good +ones—“Bayreuth” and “the grave.” The former had parted him from her so +long; the latter was soon to part him from her for ever. A <i>third</i> +reason might perhaps be this: Lenette, as regarded his love for +Nathalie, was <i>not</i> so very utterly the reverse of right. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<p class="center">AFTER SUMMER OF MARRIAGE—PREPARATIONS FOR DEATH. +</p> + +<p> +Although Sunday was come, and the Vicar’s eyes were no more open than +his congregation’s (because, like many of the clergy, he kept his +physical eyes shut while preaching), my hero went to him to get his +certificate of birth, because this was wanted for the Brandenburg +Widows’ Fund. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber had charged himself with the rest. Enough of the subject—for +I don’t care to say more about it than I can help; because some years +ago—long after all Siebenkæs’s pecuniary affairs had been settled up +to the last farthing, and his debt to the Fund duly paid—the ‘Imperial +Gazette’ publicly accused me of bringing discredit upon Integrity and +Widows’ Funds by the last book of this story of mine, and considered it +to be its (the ‘Gazette’s’) duty to take me pretty severely to task on +the subject, according to its measure of ability. But are the advocate +and I the same person? Does not everybody know that my proceedings as +regards my married life in general, and the Prussian Widows’ Fund in +particular, have been quite unlike those of Siebenkæs in every respect, +and that to this very hour I have never departed this life, either in +jest or in earnest, in all these years during which I have regularly +paid a considerable annual contribution to the institution in question? +Nay, do I not mean—(and I need have no hesitation in saying so)—to go +on paying my yearly <i>quotum</i> for as many more years as I can—so that, +when I die, the fund may have got more out of me than out of any other +contributor? +</p> + +<p> +These are my views on the subject; but I must do Siebenkæs the simple +justice to state (to his credit) that the views by which he was +actuated differed very, very little from my own. The only thing was, +that, in Bayreuth, he had immolated his own truthful heart to the +stormy urgency of his friend, Leibgeber, which had imbued and +intoxicated him, in a moment of enthusiasm, with that cosmopolitan +spirit of his which, in the boundless soul-transmigrations which, in +the course of his never ending journeyings he passed through, had come +to look upon life too much as a mere game at cards, and stage-play—as +a Chicken-hazard, and Opera Buffa and Seria combined. And as, besides, +he knew Leibgeber’s pecuniary circumstances, and his contempt for money +(and his own into the bargain), he had undertaken a <i>rôle</i> which was +anything but well suited to him, and as to which he had as little +foreseen the torture of difficulty which it would cost him to act it, +as the penitential sermon which was to be preached from Gotha +concerning it. +</p> + +<p> +At the same time it was a great piece of good luck that it was <i>only</i> +Becker’s ‘Gazette’ that found out about Nathalie’s straw-widowhood, and +not Lenette! Heavens, if the <i>latter</i>, with her silk “Forget-me” (for +the “not” had altogether disappeared from it), in her hand, had got +wind of Firmian’s adoptive marriage! I neither desire to judge the fair +sex, nor to be judged by them. But at this point I would fain put to +all my lady readers (and most particularly to <i>one</i> of them), two +rather weighty and important questions. +</p> + +<p> +“Would <i>you</i> not bend down from your judge’s seat, and hand my hero, if +not a <i>flower</i>-wreath, an <i>oak</i>-wreath, at all events, for his good +and +kind behaviour to this feminine couple? Or (inasmuch as there are four +female hands playing a duet sonata on his heart), a bouquet for his +button-hole at the very least?” Dearest lady readers, you could not +possibly have given a better verdict—although my surprise at it is not +so great as my gratification. My second question nobody shall put to +you but yourselves. Let each of you ask herself, “Suppose <i>you</i> had +this fourth book of my story put into your hands, and <i>were</i> Lenette +her very self, and consequently knew to a hair all about the whole +business from beginning to end; what would you <i>think</i> of your husband +Siebenkæs’ proceedings? What would you <i>do</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +I will answer the question for you: “Weep, storm,<a name="div2Ref_80" href="#div2_80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> chide, be very +angry, not speak a word, break things, &c.” So terribly does +selfishness falsify, corrupt and degrade the most delicate moral +feelings, coercing them into the giving of two totally diverse verdicts +upon one and the same case. Whenever I am wavering, or in any +hesitation, concerning the worth of a character, or conclusion, I +always find it helps me to come to a decision in a moment if I +represent it to my mind’s-eye as coming wet from the press in a novel +or biography. If it seems right <i>then</i>, it is certain to <i>be</i> right. +</p> + +<p> +It was far better, and more becoming, for Graces to dwell hidden in the +Satyrs of old, and in Socrates, than to reverse the process, so that +Satyrs should dwell hidden within Graces. The Satyr who <i>possessed</i> +Lenette butted about him in all directions with horns of very considerable +sharpness. Her unreciprocated anger began to take the shape of +sneering banter, for her husband’s present meekness and gentleness were +so strikingly in contrast with his former Job’s-disputations, that she +came to the conclusion that his heart was frozen altogether. In old +times he had wanted to be served by mutes (like a Sultan), until his +satirical fœtus, his book, should be brought to the light of day by +help of the Roonhuysian lever and Cæsarian operation of the penknife; +even as Zacharias was dumb until the child ceased to be so, and was +born, and cried simultaneously with him. Formerly, their married life +had been like most other people’s; for the majority of wedded pairs are +like those twin-daughters,<a name="div2Ref_81" href="#div2_81"><sup>[81]</sup></a> grown together as to their backs, but +continually quarrelling (though they could never look each other in the +face), and always trying to go towards opposite quarters of the globe, +till the one succeeded in forcing the other in the direction in which +she wanted to go. Now, on the contrary, Firmian allowed all Lenette’s +discords to jar on as long as they pleased, without the slightest trace +of irritation. A soft, peaceful light now fell upon all her angles, +upon her works of supererogation in washing, on the water-sproutlings +of her tongue; and the tint of the shadow which her heart (made of dark +earth, like everybody else’s) cast, as a matter of course, was very +much lost in the blue of heaven, as shadows cast in starlight are +(according to Mariette) as blue as the sky overhead. And was there not +always a grand, blue, starry sky spread out above his soul, in the +shape of death? Every morning, every evening, he said to himself, “Why +should I not go on always forgiving everything! We have such a very +little while to be together now.” Every opportunity of forgiving did +something to sweeten the bitterness of his voluntary farewell; and, as +those who are going away, or going to die, are eager to pardon,—the +deep, warm spring and fount of love in his heart was never chilled from +morning till night. He was fain to pass along the brief, dark, alley of +weeping willows, which led from his home to his empty grave (a <i>full</i> +one, alas! as regarded his love), leaning only on beloved arms; and to +rest on the mossy banks by its side, between his friend and his wife, +with a beloved hand in each of his own. Thus it is that death not only +beautifies our bodies when the soul has fled (as Lavater points out), +but even in life the thought of death gives new beauty to our +lineaments, and new strength to the heart, as rosemary both winds as a +garland about the dead, and revives the fainting by its cordial +essence. +</p> + +<p> +“There is nothing surprising to me in this,” quoth the reader. +“Everybody in Firmian’s position would have felt just as he did; at all +events, <i>I</i> should.” But, dear reader, <i>are</i> we not <i>all</i> in +Firmian’s +position? Does the nearness or the remoteness of our everlasting +good-bye make any difference? Ah! inasmuch as, here below, we are +nothing but images, delusively firm, and red of colour, standing on the +edges of our holes, into which (like the ancient princes) we totter, +crumbling to dust, when the unknown hand gives the mouldering images a +shake—why do we not say (like Firmian), “Why should I not forgive? We +have so short a time to be together.” We should have four better +fast-days, and prayer- and penitence-days, than we usually have if we +had but four days of bitter, hopeless sickness to go through, one after +the other, every year; because we should look down from our sick bed +(that ice-region of life beside the crater) with loftier and sublimer +glance upon the pleasure-gardens and pleasure-forests of life as they +shrunk and shrivelled away; because <i>there</i> our wretched racecourses +would seem shorter, and only the <i>people</i> larger, and we should <i>there</i> +love nothing but <i>hearts</i>, magnify and detect no other faults but our +own, and because we leave our sick beds with better resolutions than we +take to them with. For the first day of convalescence of the body, +after its winter of sickness, is the blossoming time of a lovelier +soul, which issues forth as if transfigured from the earth’s cold crust +into a mild warm Eden; longing to press all things to her breast +(feeble yet, and short of breath)—mankind, and flowers, and spring +breezes, and every other bosom which has sighed for her upon her bed of +pain. Like all the newly risen from death, she longs to love <i>all +things</i> throughout an eternity; and the whole heart is a warm and dewy +spring-time, rich in buds, beneath a youthful sun. +</p> + +<p> +<i>How</i> Firmian would have loved his Lenette, had she not constrained him +to be always pardoning, instead of petting and caressing her! Ah! she +would have rendered his approaching death a terribly difficult task for +him if she had been like what she was in their honeymoon days! +</p> + +<p> +But their byegone Paradise was now yielding a harvest of ripe <i>Grains</i> +of Paradise (the old name for peppercorns). Lenette piled fuel on the +fire of her hell’s ante-chamber of jealousy, brewing there, for him, +the draught of the coming heaven of Vaduz. A jealous woman can be cured +by no kind of speech or treatment; she is like the kettledrums, which +are the most difficult of all instruments to tune, and the quickest to +get out of tune when tuned. A loving, tender look was, to Lenette, a +blister; for he had looked at Nathalie with one like it. If he seemed +happy and glad, it was evident he was thinking of the past. If he +looked <i>un</i>happy and sad, he was thinking of the past too, but with +longing. He had to consider his face in the light of an open warrant of +caption, or billposter and placard, of the thoughts which were behind +it. In short, her husband merely served her as fiddle rosin to roughen +her horse-hair with, in order to bow her <i>viole d’amour</i> with it from +morning till night. He dare not allow himself more than an occasional +word about Bayreuth, scarce so much as the name of it; for if he did, +she knew whom he was thinking of. Nay, he could not say anything at all +strong in disparagement of Kuhschnappel without raising a suspicion +that he was comparing it with Bayreuth, and thinking the latter much +the better place (for reasons well known to <i>her</i>). Wherefore (and +whether in earnest, or from consideration for her, I really do not +know) he restricted his laudations of Bayreuth merely to the +<i>buildings</i> there, not venturing to extend them to their inhabitants. +</p> + +<p> +There was only one object of praise concerning the praising, whereof he +ignored every idea of difficulty and miscomprehension, and this was +Leibgeber, his friend. But—thanks to Rosa’s calumnies, and the fact of +his having aided and abetted in affairs at Fantaisie—it so chanced +that Leibgeber had come to be more unendurable by her now than he had +been in the old days, by reason of his indecorous conduct, and his +great dog. She knew, moreover, that Stiefel had several times expressed +grave disapproval of him and his doings. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Henry will be here very soon now, Lenette,” said Firmian. +</p> + +<p> +“And that horrible brute with him, I suppose, of course?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I do think,” he answered, “you might like my friend a little better +than you do; if not because he is so very like myself, at any rate, on +account of the faithfulness of his friendship. If you did, you wouldn’t +be so terribly set against his dog; you used not to mind mine when I +had one. He <i>must</i> have <i>some</i> faithful creature to follow him about +on +his everlasting journeys; through thick and thin, through good times +and bad, as Saufinder does. And he looks upon <i>me</i> as just such another +faithful creature, and is every bit as fond of me. But for that matter, +the whole faithful trio of us are not likely to trouble Kuhschnappel +very long.” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, no amount of love enabled him to gain his <i>suit</i> for love. +It here strikes me that this was only a most natural matter, and that +the recent warm proximity of the Schulrath had raised Lenette’s +temperature (of love) to such a point that <i>her husband’s</i> felt like a +blast of cold wind by comparison. The jealousy of hatred proceeds just +like the jealousy of love. There is but one sign for the cypher of +nothing and the circle of infinity. +</p> + +<p> +The time had arrived when Siebenkæs had to pave the way, and give a +colour to, his sham death, by a feigned sickness of some sort; but this +voluntary bending over the grave, and drooping towards it, gave his +conscience a pretext for trying to win back Lenette’s embittered heart. +Thus it is that deceived, and deceiving, man always magnifies and +elevates his false shows, his cheateries, and deceptions either into +<i>less</i> ones than they really are, or into beneficently intended ones. +</p> + +<p> +The Greek and Roman lawgivers invented dreams and prophecies, which +contained the ground-plans and elevations of their projects, as well as +the building-conditions, and building-materials of them. For instance, +Alcibiades lied forth a prophecy of the conquest of Sicily. Firmian +imitated this process, with alterations suitable to the circumstances +of his case. He often said, in Stiefel’s presence (for Stiefel took a +deep and tender interest in everything, and, consequently, so did +<i>she</i>), that he should soon be going away for ever—that he should soon +be playing in a game at hide-and-seek, and hide himself so effectually +that no friendly eye should be able to find him again—that he would +soon slip behind the bed-curtain of the coffin-pall, and vanish. He +told them a dream (which, perhaps, was no invention). He said, “The +Schulrath and Lenette were looking at a room in which a scythe was +moving of its own accord;<a name="div2Ref_82" href="#div2_82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> then, in a while, Firmian’s <i>clothes</i> +were walking about in the room, empty, without any <i>body</i> in them. ‘He +must have <i>other</i> clothes on,’ they both said. Then all at once the +churchyard passed along the street, with a fresh grave in it, no grass +on it as yet. But a voice cried, ‘Seek him not there; it is over and +past now.’ And a second (softer) voice cried, Rest—rest—thou art worn +and weary. And a third said, ‘Weep not, if ye love him.’ But a fourth +cried out, in terrible tones, ‘Jest—jest—all human life and death.’” +Firmian was the first to shed tears; his friend was the next, and his +angry spouse wept, <i>with the latter</i>. +</p> + +<p> +But now he looked with eager longing for the coming of Leibgeber, whose +hand would lead him quicker and more pleasantly through the dark +foreground, and the hot, reeking, sultry, breathless, fore<i>hell</i> of his +artificial death. For he himself was now too feeble and too tender to +pass through them alone. +</p> + +<p> +And upon one particular, unusually lovely, August evening he was so, +more than ever before. There played and rested on his face that +glorified and celestial bliss of self-devotion—that tearless +depth of emotion and smiling gentleness, which sometimes come to us +when pain and sorrow are—<i>weary</i> for the time, rather than over and +past—something like the blue sky when the brightness of the rainbow +falls in light athwart its radiant beauty. He resolved to bid good-bye, +in solitude, that day to all the beautiful country which lay around the +town. +</p> + +<p> +The face of Nature was veiled (but not for his eyes, for his soul +only), in a thin, soft mist, which went hovering before the breeze in +ever-changing wreaths, like the tender vapouriness—not amounting to a +shrouding—which Berghem’s and Wouvermanns’ pencils have cast upon +their landscapes. As though to say farewell, he went and touched, and +gazed upon, every leafy tree beneath whose branches he had been wont to +read—each little darkling brooklet, purling on its way beneath its +thickets of forest-roots, laved bare of earth by its ripples—each +rocky crag, all green and sweet of scent with moss and flowers—each +stair-way of rising hillocks which, in the days gone by, he had climbed +to see the sun set (or gone down to watch his risings) many times +instead of once—and every spot where wide creation had brought tears +of rapture from his happy heart. But everywhere—amid the long harvest +corn-ears, amid Creation’s oft-repeated tale in Nature’s brooding-oven +with all its swarming life, in the seed-nursery of the ripe and +endless garden—a hollow, broken voice cried out, in long-drawn tones +which mingled with, and sounded clear above, the bright, rejoicing, +trumpet-clang of Nature’s ‘Alexander’s Feast,’ “What are these dead +men’s bones that move about amid this life of mine, defiling all my +blossoms?” And to him it seemed as if, from out the glory of the red +West sky, a something sang to him, “Wandering skeleton! with strings of +nerves clasped in thy bony hand, thou playest not on thyself. The +breath of endless life is breathing on the Æolian harp, which answers +back in music, and thou art played <i>upon</i>.” But soon this mournful +error fell away from him, and he thought thus: “I am both playing and +answering back in music. I both <i>think</i> and <i>am thought</i>. It is not +the +green bark that holds <i>my</i> Dryad, my <i>spiritus rector</i> (the soul). The +latter holds the former. The life of the body depends as intimately on +the life of the soul, as that of the latter on that of the former. Life +and force are at work, with power, everywhere. The grave hillock and +the mouldering body are each a <i>world</i> of powers at work. We <i>change</i> +our stage, but do not <i>retire</i> from it.” +</p> + +<p> +When he got home, he found the following letter from Leibgeber for +him:— +</p> + +<p> +“I am on <i>my</i> way; set out on <i>yours</i>.—L.” +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<p class="center">THE APPARITION—HOMECOMING OF THE STORMS IN AUGUST, OR THE LAST +QUARREL—THE RAIMENT OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. +</p> + +<p> +One night, at about eleven o’clock, a tremendous blow was heard to +strike the roof-tree, as if two or three hundredweights of Alps had +come down upon it. Lenette went upstairs with Sophia to see whether it +was the devil, or only a cat. They came back with wintry faces, the +colour of flour, and as long as one’s arm; and Sophia cried out, “Oh! +it’s the Poor’s Advocate (may the Lord have a care of him!) he’s lying +up yonder on the camp-bed, like a corpse.” The <i>live</i> Poor’s Advocate, +to whom this tale was being told, was sitting in his room. He said it +could not be true, or <i>he</i> would have heard the noise as well as the +others. From this deafness of his, all the women at once inferred what +the occurrence really portended—to wit, his death. The cobbler Fecht +(who, by right of royal succession, was night-watchman regnant that +night), glad of an opportunity of showing the pluck that was in +him, armed himself with the watchman’s spear-staff (his entire +artillery-park), but, when nobody was looking, stuck a black leather +hymn-book in his pocket—by way of a species of saintly host—in case +it <i>should</i> turn out that it <i>was</i> the devil that was upstairs. On his +way up he repeated a good many fragments of the Evening Service, which +was more than could, perhaps, have been required of him on that evening +when, as Archon of the Watch, his calling of the hours was, in fact, a +species of <i>expanded</i> Evening Prayer, distributed in small modicums +about the streets. He was marching bravely up to the camp-bed, when, +alas! <i>he too</i> saw the white powdery face before him, and, behind +the bed, a hell-hound with eyes of fire, watching the corpse in a +grim and ferocious fashion. He stood still instantaneously, as if +petrified—like a watchman carved out of alabaster, <i>hard boiled</i> (so +to speak), in a perspiration of terror, with his weapon held out before +him. He foresaw, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the moment he +turned his back to go flying down the stairs, <i>the thing</i> would clasp +its arms about him from behind, saddle him, and ride him down. By the +greatest good luck, a voice from downstairs here fell into his heart +like a cordial or courage-water, and he heaved up his boar-spear with +the view of striking <i>the thing</i> dead, or, at all events, gauging the +cubic contents of it. But when, at this juncture, the snowy-looking +thing began to rise slowly up, as if growing—his head began to feel as +if he had on a bonnet of pitch, and somebody were screwing this cap, +and the hair inside it, tighter and tighter every moment; and he +could not keep hold of his eel-spear because the top of it felt as +heavy as if his biggest journeyman was hanging to it. So he let his +sticking-iron go, and flew bravely from the topmost, three-ledger-lined +octave of the stair, like a flash of lightning, down to the double-bass +key or step. +</p> + +<p> +When he got down, he swore, in presence of the master of the house and +all the lodgers assembled, that he was going to do his watchman’s duty +without his halberd, for the ghost had got hold of that; and in fact, +he quivered like an aspen-leaf and his blood ran cold in his veins, +every time his eye so much as rested for a moment on the Advocate’s +face. Firmian was the only one of the company who had the courage to go +upstairs for the weapon. When he got upstairs he found what he had +expected to find, namely, his friend Leibgeber, who had whitened +himself with the powder out of an old wig by way of gradually paving +the way and preparing people’s minds for Siebenkæs’s artificial death. +They quietly embraced, and Henry said he would come upstairs, in an +orthodox fashion, next day. +</p> + +<p> +When Firmian returned to his room, he said there was nothing upstairs +but an old wig; here was the swift-footed spearman’s spear, and he +counted here before him two timid hares of the female sex and one of +the male. But the entire conventicle knew as well as possible what all +this <i>meant</i>. Nobody, with as many brains as a turnip in his head, +would give a halfpenny for Siebenkæs’ life; and these ghost-seers +thanked Heaven most devoutly that they <i>were</i> thus frightened to death, +since it was a proof that their own lives were in no immediate danger. +Lenette could not bring herself to sit up in bed all night, for fear +she should see her husband’s likeness. +</p> + +<p> +When morning came, Henry mounted the stair (with his dog), in dusty +boots. Siebenkæs felt as though his hat and his pockets must be full of +flowers from the Bayreuth Eden; he was like a garden statue from the +lost garden. To Lenette, just for this very reason, this palm-tree from +Firmian’s East India possessions at Bayreuth (we shall say nothing of +Saufinder), was nothing but a prickly holly-bush, and never less than +now could she take any pleasure in such a gooseberry-bush, such a +thistle-head—beautiful as if fresh from Hamilton’s pencil.<a name="div2Ref_83" href="#div2_83"><sup>[83]</sup></a> I must +admit, however (and I say it right out, without going about the bush), +that his affection for Firmian made his mode of treating Lenette (who +was in the wrong and in the right in about equal proportions) a little +too reserved and cool. We never hate a woman so heartily as when she is +torturing somebody who is very dear to us; just as, on the other hand, +a woman is so grim to nobody as to the tormentor of her pet female +friend. +</p> + +<p> +The scene which I have now got to describe in a minute or two makes me +feel, in the keenest degree, sensible of the depth of the chasm which +lies between the novel-writer (who can skip annoying matters, and sugar +up anything he wishes for himself, his hero, or his readers) and the +mere biographer, or writer of actual history, like myself, who has to +dish up everything in a strictly historical form, without asking +whether it has got to be sugared or salted. If I formerly, then, +excised and omitted the scene in question altogether, I was perhaps to +blame: but there was nothing surprising in my doing so, seeing that in +these days I preferred delighting my readers to instructing them, and +thought more about pretty colouring than truthful drawing. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber (and all belonging to him) had for some time been wholly +unendurable in Lenette’s eyes, chiefly for this reason (amongst others) +that he, a man without anything in the shape of an official title or +appointment of any sort, should be on such very familiar and intimate +terms with her husband—a man who had held the post of “Poor’s +Advocate” of Kuhschnappel for a considerable time. Also that, like her +said husband (by him misled and perverted), he went about without a +pigtail, so that people pointed at the pair of them, and cried, “Ey! +look at that nice couple!” or “<i>Par nobile fratrum</i>.” These sayings, +and worse besides, Lenette could draw from the most authentic of all +sources of history. Of course, it is true that, <i>now-a-days</i>, it +requires about as much courage to <i>put on</i> a tail as it then did to +<i>take it off</i>. A canon of a cathedral does not, now-a-days (as he did +in bygone times), find it incumbent on him to make himself a pigtail, +and pleasant society by help of it; consequently he has not got to +<i>cast</i> it twice a year (as peacocks do their tails) that he may legally +earn his salary of two thousand florins by appearing in the choir at +vespers with close-cropped hair; the latter he wears at the card-table +now, us well as in the pulpit. In the few countries where the pigtail +still obtains, it is more in the nature of a duty-pendulum and +state-perpendicular than anything else; and long hair (which formed +part of the royal insignia of the Frank kings) is a badge of +servitude in the case of soldiers, so long as it is worn tied up with a +pigtail-ribbon, and not flying unbound and loose. The Frieslanders were +long in the habit of taking hold of the pigtail when swearing an +oath—calling this “the Bœdel Oath;” and to this day in many +countries the military or standard oath presupposes the existence of a +queue. And as among the ancient Germans a pigtail carried on a pole +represented a parish, of course a company or regiment (of which each +soldier has his own tail at the back of his head) must be considered to +represent a company-queue of patriotic union and of German nationality. +</p> + +<p> +Lenette now made little secret of it to her husband (and Stiefel stood +by her in the background), that she was very little pleased, on the +whole, with Leibgeber and his on-goings. “My dear poor father” (she +said, in Leibgeber’s presence), “was copyist to the Council, but he was +always just like other people in his dress, and everything else.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, dear!” Siebenkæs answered, “as he was a copyist, of course he +had always to <i>be</i> copying, with pens, or coats, as the case might be. +But <i>my</i> father loaded guns for princes, and did not trouble his head +about what else might happen or not happen.” Ere this, when opportunity +had offered, she had held up and measured the copying clerk as against +the gun-charger, distantly suggesting, as it were, that Siebenkæs had +not had anything like so great and distinguished a father as she had, +and, as a consequence, had not received the sort of superior education +which teaches people manners, and how they ought to behave. This +preposterous and ludicrous looking down upon his genealogical tree so +annoyed him always that he often laughed at himself. At the same time, +the little by-blow at Leibgeber did not surprise him so much as her +remarkable <i>bodily</i> repugnance and antipathy to him. Nothing would +induce her to shake hands with him: “And I’m sure,” she said, “if he +were ever to <i>kiss</i> me, it would be my death.” With all his laborious +urgency and questions as to the reason of this, he could get no answer +out of her but that she “would tell him after Leibgeber was gone.” +Unfortunately, by that time <i>he</i> would be gone himself, too, and in his +coffin, <i>i. e</i>. on the road to Vaduz. +</p> + +<p> +And even this extraordinary obstinacy (as of an unyielding +bonnet-block) he could endure at a time when one of his eyes warmed +itself at his friend, while the other cooled itself at his grave. +</p> + +<p> +At last something was superadded; and as I am sure that nobody can +narrate it more faithfully than I, I beg that I may be believed. It was +in the evening, before Leibgeber went back to his hotel (the Lizard, if +I remember), and the deep black, half-orb of a thunder-cloud had +gathered silently in the West, shrouding the sun, and mounting higher, +and hanging more and more threateningly over the expectant world. +The two friends were talking of what a glorious thing a thunderstorm +was, and of the espousals of heaven and earth—the highest with the +lowest—of the “descent of heaven to earth” (as Leibgeber put it); and +Siebenkæs remarked how, properly speaking, it was only one’s “Fantasy” +which pictured the storm, and “Fantasy” only which brought about the +union of the highest and the lowest. I wish he had followed the advice +of Campe and Kolbe, and used the home-grown word “Fancy” (or +“Imagination”), instead of the foreign word “Fantasy;” for that +word-purist Lenette pricked up her ears as soon as ever it passed his +lips. She who had nothing in her breast but jealousy, and nothing in +her head but the “Fantaisie” (at Bayreuth), put down to the score of +the latter every word that the two men were saying in eulogy of +“Fantasy” in man; for instance, how <i>it</i> (namely, “the Markgrave’s +Fantaisie,” thought Lenette) blessed us through the beauty of its +sublime creations—how, but for the enjoyment of its lovelinesses, a +Kuhschnappel could not be borne with for a moment (of course, because +he thinks of that Nathalie of his, thought she); how it clothes and +adorns the bare spots of life with its beautiful flowers “two or three +silk forget-me-nots,” said Lenette to herself; and how it (the Bayreuth +Fantaisie) gilds, not only the pills of life, but also the nuts, nay, +the Paris apples of beauty themselves. +</p> + +<p> +Heavens! what double meanings in every corner, and on every side! For +how triumphantly Siebenkæs could have refuted the error of confounding +Fantasy with Fantaisie, if he had merely shown how little of the poetic +Fantasy there was in the Fantaisie at Bayreuth, and how (in the latter) +French “taste” had trimmed, behung, and begarlanded the lovely, +romantic hills and valleys of Nature’s inventing with rhetoric edifices +of flowers, periods, and antithesis; and that what Leibgeber said about +Fantasy’s gilding the Paris apples of life, applied in quite another +sense to the Bayreuth Fantaisie, because there the French Christmas +silver-foil would have to be scraped off from Nature’s apples before +they could be bitten. +</p> + +<p> +Scarce was Leibgeber gone out from the house, and off into the storm +(which, according to his custom, he enjoyed in the open air), when +<i>Lenette’s</i> storm broke, ere the atmospherical one did. “There, you +see, I heard with my very own ears,” she said, “how that Unbeliever and +Kill-joy there goes about coupling and marrying you in the Fantaisie at +Bayreuth; and <i>this</i> is the fellow an honest woman is expected to +shake hands with, or touch with the tip of one of her fingers.” She let +a few more peals of thunder roll—but it is my duty to the poor woman +(turned into a fermenting vat by the addition to her of such a quantity +of mash) not to give too accurate a record of all her frothings. +Meantime, all the acid matter in her husband began to effervesce in its +turn. To find fault with his friend to his face, no matter <i>what</i> +misunderstanding this might arise from (and he did not trouble himself +to ask what the misunderstanding was, inasmuch as <i>none</i> could be any +excuse)—was, in his eyes, a sin against the Holy Ghost of his +friendship. Accordingly, he thundered most roundly in reply. It is some +excuse for the husband, and for the wife, too, for that matter, that +the storm in the air fanned the fuel in his head into a brighter blaze, +so that he strode up and down the room like a man demented, and +instantly, and on the spot, blew to the four winds of heaven his +resolve not to be put out with anything Lenette might do till after he +was dead; for he would not, and could not, suffer that “his last friend +in life and death should be wrongfully accused by the inheritress of +his name, either in his sayings or in his doings.” It will give some +idea of the violence of his volcanic eruptions (all of which, for his +sake, I mean to pass by in silence), if I say that, vieing in loudness +of thundering with the sky itself, he shouted— +</p> + +<p> +“Such a man as <i>he</i>!” and with the words, “<i>you</i> are a female +head, too, curse you!” administered a ringing box on the ear to a +bonnet-block, which had a grand hat, with feathers upon it. As this +head was Lenette’s favourite Sultana of all the blocks—one which she +often fondled—nothing was to be <i>expected</i> but an outbreak as violent +as if he had given the box to her very self, just as Siebenkæs stormed +at the insult to <i>his</i> friend. Nothing came, however, but a gentle +shower of bitter tears. “Oh! good heavens! don’t you hear what a +terrible storm?” was all she said. “Thunder here, thunder there!” cried +Siebenkæs (who, once set rolling down from the lofty peak where he had +been reposing, went on, according to both the moral and the physical +laws of falling bodies, increasing in velocity and momentum, until he +reached the bottom). “I wish the lightning would shatter all the +rag-tag and bob-tail in Kuhschnappel that dare to say a syllable +against my Henry.” +</p> + +<p> +As the storm grew fiercer she spoke more and more gently, saying, “Ah! +gracious, what a peal! Oh, please repent! Suppose it were to strike you +in your sin?” “My Henry is out in it,” he said. “Oh that the lightning +would strike us both dead, him and me, with the same flash! I should be +spared all this miserable business of dying, and we should always be +together then.” +</p> + +<p> +His wife had never seen him so angry, or so contemptuous of life and +religion, and consequently, could only expect the lightning to fall on +the Merbitzer’s house, and strike both him and her dead, by way of an +“example.” +</p> + +<p> +And at this moment, a flash of such brilliance illumined the heavens, +and such a shattering peal of thunder followed close upon it, that, +stretching out her hand to him, she said, “I will do anything and +everything you wish me to do; only, for Heaven’s sake, be a God-fearing +man again! I will even give Leibgeber my hand; yes, and a kiss too, if +I must—no matter whether he has washed his face after the dog’s +licking it, or not—and I shall neither listen, nor mind, when you say +what a delightful, beautiful place the silvery, flowery Bayreuth +Fantaisie is.” +</p> + +<p> +Heavens! how this lightning-flash illumined the depths of two of +Lenette’s labyrinths for him, letting him see her innocent confounding +of Fantasy and Fantaisie (already noticed), and <i>his own</i> confounding +of her strong, personal, idiosyncratic repugnance to (what she +considered) uncleanness, with real dislike. The latter was on this +wise. Inasmuch as her feminine proclivity for excessive cleanness and +beautifying and polishing were more akin to the feline race than to the +canine (which cares little about either, or about the feline race, for +that matter), Leibgeber’s hand, after Saufinder’s tongue had touched +it, was to her as a thumbscrew, and Esau’s hand all Chiragra. Her sense +of cleanliness shrunk from touching it; and as for Henry’s lips! though +ten days had elapsed since the dog had jumped up to them with his, they +would have been considered the most fearful bugbears, and scarecrows, +which abhorrence could set up for her. Even time itself was no lipsalve +in her eyes.<a name="div2Ref_84" href="#div2_84"><sup>[84]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +This time, however, the discovery of the error did not bring about +peace (as it used to do in former times), but only a renewal of the +decree of separation. Tears came to his eyes, indeed, and he gave her +his hand, saying, “Forgive me! It is the last time! As the proverb +says, ‘The storms come home in August.’” But he could neither offer nor +receive a kiss of reconciliation. This, his latest falling away from +his warm resolves to be patient, irrevocably proclaimed <i>how wide</i> +their inner separation had become. What is the use of <i>seeing</i> one’s +errors, when the <i>causes</i> of them are still in force? What is the good +of clipping a ripple or two away from the ocean, when there are still +clouds and billows? The crime against the bonnet-block was what rankled +most in his breast; it became a Gorgon’s head to him, continually +threatening and avenging. +</p> + +<p> +He sought his friend with a renewal of affection, for he had suffered +for him; and with new eagerness, that he might arrange the place for +his death with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Of what dangerous malady do you think you would prefer to give up the +ghost,” said Henry, commencing the medical consultation. “Would +inflammation of the lungs be to your taste? or inflammation of the +bowels, or of the uvula; or would phrenitis be more in your line, or +bronchitis; or would you prefer a quinsy, a colic, the devil and his +grandmother? We have got all the requisite <i>miasmata</i> and <i>materia +epidemica</i> ready to our hands; and when we throw in the month of +August—harvest-month of reapers and doctors—by way of poison-powder, +you certainly never can get over it all.” Firmian answered: “You are a +sort of master-beggar with all kinds of ailments for sale;<a name="div2Ref_85" href="#div2_85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> +blindness, palsy, and the rest. But for my part, I am for apoplexy, +that <i>volti subito</i>, that extra post of death. I have had more than my +share of legal prolixities, verbosities, and delays of <i>all</i> sorts.” +“Well,” said Leibgeber, “apoplexy probably <i>is</i> the <i>summarissimum</i> of +death. At the same time, we must be guided by the best pathological +works, and make up our minds for <i>three</i> attacks of it. We can’t go by +Nature here, we must be guided by the laws of medicine; and by them, +death has to forward a set of <i>three</i> bills of exchange before one of +them is accepted and honoured in the next world. He knocks three times +with his auctioneer’s hammer. I know too well, the doctors are not the +men to listen to reason on this point; you will have to make up your +mind to the three apoplectic strokes.” “But what the deuce!” said +Siebenkæs, with comic warmth, “If apoplexy gives me <i>two</i> pretty +powerful strokes, what more can a doctor desire? The only thing is, I +can’t be attacked for the next three or four days, because I must wait +for a cheaper coffin-builder.” The right of coffin-building (it should +perhaps be explained) goes its round in a migratory manner among the +carpenters, and one has got to pay these shipwrights of our last ark +whatever they demand, because the property we leave behind us at death +has to be given over as plunder by our executors and administrators, to +the undertaker, (that excise officer of death) like the palace of a +dead doge or pope. +</p> + +<p> +“There may be another advantage in this short reprieve, too,” said +Leibgeber. “I have an old collection of family sermons here, which I +bought for somewhere about half the amount of a police-court fine. I do +not know anywhere else but in this work where such impressive sermons +are delivered—it is more especially in the <i>binding</i> that they are +preached. The binding is wood, you perceive, and there is a live +preacher in there, preaching as finely as any preacher that can be +found in a pulpit.” This preacher in the wooden boards of the old book +in question, was the beetle which goes by the name of the death-watch, +wood-borer, or <i>Ptinus pertinax</i>, because when he is touched he keeps +up the appearance of a sham death, torture him as you will—and because +the little blows he strikes, which are nothing but knocks at his +sweetheart’s door, are supposed to be Death’s knocks at ours. For which +reason any piece of furniture in which he was wont to knock used to be +thought a valuable article of commerce, or heirloom. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber added that, as there was nothing he so detested as a man who +tried to outwit God and the Devil (from fear of death) by a sudden +repentance, he was fond of hiding this sermon-book amongst the +furniture of a hell-fearing individual of this description, so as to +give him a good sound terrifying with the beetle’s funeral sermons +(although the insect, for his part, was, in fact, thinking solely of +mundane matters during his preaching—like many other preachers). “So, +could I not put the sermon-book, with its funeral preacher, in amongst +<i>your</i> books, that your wife might hear him, and think of death—of +yours, that is to say—and so get more used to the idea of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” said Firmian, “she shall not suffer so much for me before her +time. She has suffered quite enough already.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as you please,” said Henry; “but my beetle and you would have +gone together capitally. You are going to simulate death, just as the +<i>Ptinus pertinax</i> does.” +</p> + +<p> +For the rest, he was delighted that everything had worked together so +well, and that it was just a year since he had stamped upon Blaise’s +glass periwig, and insulted, or blackguarded, him. Because (as we +have seen) libels of this sort are not actionable after the lapse of a +year, except libels by a <i>critic</i>—which (like the Rector in Ragusa) +only reign for a month—that is to say, the time during which the +journal in which they appear circulates in the reading society. And a +book—which may be said to hold the rank of dictator in the realm of +letters—cannot reign, with all its influence, more than a Roman +dictator, namely, six months—that is to say, from its birth-fair to +its death-fair—and, like Grub Street scribblers, it dies either in +spring or in autumn. +</p> + +<p> +They went back into a new-dressed, freshly-arranged room. Lenette did +what she could to paint the cracks of her housekeeping over with +flowers (like the flaws in porcelain), and always opened pieces of +music in which that particular string (of an article of furniture), +which chanced to be broken, did not require to be touched. Firmian, on +this occasion, sacrificed a greater number of the good and entertaining +ideas (which struck him) than usual to her efforts to place Spanish +screens between the company and the steppes and fallow-fields of her +poverty; and more than Henry did even then. All women—even those +without brains—are the sharpest and most delicately-observant of +augurs and <i>clairvoyante</i> prophetesses concerning matters which closely +concern themselves. Lenette was an instance. Stiefel was there in the +evening—a good deal of argument was going on, and Stiefel openly +declared that he (with Salvian and other able theologians) was of +opinion that the children of Israel (whose garments never wore into the +minutest hole during all the forty years they passed in the wilderness) +always continued of exactly the same <i>size</i> (so as always to fit their +clothes exactly) with the exception of children, in whose cases the +clothes, which had been cut to fit them out of the wardrobes of the +dead, grew with their bodies in length and breadth. “In this way,” he +added, “all the difficulties of the great miracle are got over easily, +by means of lesser accessory-miracles.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber answered (with sparkling eyes), “I knew <i>that</i> while I was +yet in my mother’s womb. There was not a hole in all the hosts of +Israel, except those which they brought with them out of Egypt—and +<i>these</i> never got any bigger. Even suppose anybody made a hole in his +cheek, or in his coat, when he was mourning—these holes stitched +themselves together in a trice, of their own accord. What a shameful +and deplorable thing it is, though, that the host of Israel should have +been the first, and the last, army whose uniform was a sort of +delightful over-body, which grew with the soul it enveloped—and where +the frock-coat developed into an electoral mantle, and from a +<i>Microvestis</i> to a <i>Macrovestis</i>! I see that eating was cloth +manufacturing (in the wilderness), manna was English wool, and the +stomach the loom. An Israelite who fed himself up to the proper pitch +was, by so doing, yielding the produce of the land, and of the +wilderness. If I had been in the recruiting-service in those days, I +should simply have hung the recruit’s jackets on to the recruit’s +measure. But how go matters in <i>our</i> wilderness here—which leads to +Egypt, not to the promised land? In <i>our</i> regiments, the <i>privates</i> +grow every year, but the coats do not. Nay, the uniforms are made for +dry seasons only, and for lean men—in wet years the clothes contract +like hygrometers, and perspiration steals more cloth than the tailor +does, or even the contractor. A commanding officer who should expect +his uniforms to stretch—who should reckon upon a <i>Periphrasis</i> of +them—going by the example, not only of the Israelites, but likewise of +the clothes-moths, and the snails (who do not expand to suit their +shells, but whose shells expand to suit <i>them</i>)—this commanding +officer, I say, would go out of his mind—for his men would be fighting +in the condition of the athletes of old—and the men themselves would +be in a nice frame of mind on the subject.” +</p> + +<p> +This innocuous sermon (wholly addressed to the account of Stiefel’s +piece of exegetic absurdity) Lenette supposed was directed against her +wardrobe. She was like the Germans in general, who search after some +<i>special</i> satiric kernel hidden in every rocket and firework serpent of +humour. Wherefore Siebenkæs begged him to pardon this poor wife of his +(over whose heart so many a sharp sorrow besides was strewn) the +inevitable and invincible ignorance of her exegesis—or rather, to +spare her the knowledge of it altogether. +</p> + +<p> +At length a Kuhschnappel bath-keeper departed this life, and fell under +the plane of the costly carpenter. “I have not a minute to waste over +my apoplexy now,” said Firmian, in Latin; “who is to be my warrant that +nobody shall die before I do, and so the cheap carpenter slip through +my fingers?” So it was arranged that he should be taken ill the +following evening. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch20"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">APOPLEXY—THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH—THE NOTARY-PUBLIC—THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT—THE KNIGHT’S MOVE—REVEL, THE MORNING +PREACHER—THE SECOND APOPLECTIC ATTACK. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening Henry drew up the curtain upon this tragedy (full of +comic gravedigger business), and discovered Firmian lying on his bed +speechless, with apoplectic head, and all his right side paralysed. The +only mode in which the patient could bring himself to endure the +torture of the deception, and of the pain he was causing Lenette, was +by making a mental vow to send her the half of his yearly income as +inspector at Vaduz, anonymously, and by remembering that by his death +she would obtain happiness, freedom, and her lover. The occupants of +the house formed a circle about the apoplectic patient, but Leibgeber +drove them out of the room, saying, “the sufferer must have quietness +and rest.” It delighted him beyond expression to be able to go on +uttering humourous lies without cessation. He assumed the office of +Imperial Hereditary Doorkeeper, and shut the door in the doctor’s +face (whom people insisted upon prescribing). “I am going to prescribe +a little prescription for the patient myself,” he said, “but, little +as it is, it will restore his speech for a time. These cursed +death-rivers, doctors’ potions, Mr. Schulrath,” (for that gentleman had +been fetched immediately) “are like those rivers which demand a dead +body every year.” So he wrote a recipe for a simple sedative powder, as +follows, reading aloud as he wrote;— +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:30%; text-indent:-2em;"> +Rx Conch: Citratæ Sirup: j.<br/> +Nitri Crystallisatæ gr. x.<br/> +<br/> +D.S. “The Sedative Powder.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent">“But above all things,” he added, in the most imperative tones, “we +must place the patient’s feet in warm water.” +</p> + +<p> +However, everybody in the house knew well enough that nothing would be +of the slightest avail, as his death had been but too unmistakably +foretold by the floury face; and Fecht felt a kind of sympathising +satisfaction that he had hit the mark. +</p> + +<p> +Scarcely had the sick man swallowed the powder, than, to the +astonishment of the Death-Assurance Association in his bedroom, he +found himself able to speak, intelligibly, if not very loud. The +domestic Vehmgericht was <i>not</i>, perhaps, altogether pleased with this. +But our good Henry had a pretext now for resuming his cheerful mien. He +comforted Lenette by reminding her that “here below pain was but an +initiation ceremony to something higher—the box-on-the-ear, or +sword-accolade whereby a man is dubbed a knight.” +</p> + +<p> +The patient had a very fair night after his sedative powder, and began +to have some slight hopes of himself. Henry would not allow Lenette +(whose eyes were heavy with tears and sleep) to sit up by his bed +during the night. He said he would prefer to be at hand himself, in +case there should be any danger; of which, however, there was no great +risk, as they made their agreement together (doing so in Latin, like +princes) that Death, the fifth act of this tragic interlude, (only one +of the <i>scenes</i> of the tragedy of Life,) should take place on the +evening of the following day. “Even till to-morrow,” said Firmian, “is +too long to wait. I am so unspeakably grieved for my poor Lenette’s +sorrow. Like David, alas! I have to make a melancholy choice between +famine, war, and pestilence, and have no way out of it but his. You, +dear brother, are my Cain, and send me on my journey, and believe in +the world to which you despatch me not a bit more than he did.<a name="div2Ref_86" href="#div2_86"><sup>[86]</sup></a> +Before you prescribed the sedative power which obliged me to talk, I +was really wishing, in my silent gloom, that the jest might become +earnest. For I <i>must</i> one day pass through that underground portal +which opens into the fortress of futurity, in which we shall be safe. +Ah! it is not the <i>dying</i> that is painful, it is the <i>parting</i>—I mean +from those we love.” Henry said, in reply, “Nature holds a broad +Achilles-shield before us to protect us from that final bayonet-thrust +of life. On our death-beds we grow cold morally before we do so +physically, a strange courtier-like indifference towards all we are +leaving creeps frostily through the dying nerves. Sapient spectators +say, ‘See, nobody but a Christian can die with such resignation and +trust.’ Never mind, dear Firmian; the two or three painful burning +minutes which you have to bear till to-morrow arrives are a capital +warm bath of Aix water for the sick spirit. It has an infernal smell of +rotten eggs <i>now</i>, no doubt, but that will go away completely as the +bath grows cool.” +</p> + +<p> +Next day Henry eulogised him as follows. “As Cato the younger slept +quietly the night before his death, (history heard him snore,) so you +appear to have afforded these debilitated, unnerved, and degenerate +days a fresh example of a similar magnanimity. If I were your Plutarch +I should record the circumstance.” +</p> + +<p> +“In sober seriousness, though,” answered Firmian, “I should be rather +pleased if, several years hence, when Death has presented his <i>second</i> +of exchange, some literary West, the historical painter, should honour +this odd <i>first</i> death of mine by describing it for the press.” This, +we see a biographical West has now actually done, but I beg to be +permitted to confess, without hesitation, that it has afforded me +sincere gratification to find among the documents this death-bed speech +and wish, which I am so completely carrying out. Leibgeber answered, +“The Jesuits in Löwen once published a little book in which the +terrible end of Luther was minutely described in Latin. Old Luther got +hold of the book and translated it, as he did the Bible, merely adding +at the end, ‘I, Dr. M. Luther, have read and translated this narrative +myself.’ If I were you, when I translated my death into English, I +should write that at the end of it too.” Do please write it, dear +Siebenkæs, as you are still in life—but translate me, at all events. +</p> + +<p> +Morning brings refreshing to the laid corn of humanity, whether it be +laid upon the hard bed of sickness, or on the softer mattress of +ordinary health; its breezes lift the bowed heads of both flowers and +men: but <i>our</i> sick man remained prostrate. Things seemed distinctly +worse with him—he could not disguise from himself that he was losing +ground; at all events he resolved to “set his house in order.” This +first quarter of the hour of death which the death bell tolled, smote +like a sharp and heavy bell-hammer upon Lenette’s heart, whence the +warm stream of the old love burst forth in bitter tears. Firmian could +not bear the sight of this disconsolate weeping; he stretched his arms +beseechingly, and the suffering creature laid herself between them in +gentle obedience, on to his breast, their tears, their sighs, and their +hearts mingled in the warmest affection, and thus they rested in +happiness (though only upon wounds) at this brief distance from the +boundary-hill of parting. +</p> + +<p> +For this poor soul’s sake, then, he grew visibly better. Another +improvement in his condition was necessary, moreover, to account for +the happy frame of mind in which he executed his last will and +testament. Leibgeber expressed satisfaction that the patient was able +to take some dinner on the table-cloth of the bed-quilt, and swallow +the contents of a sick man’s soup-dish about the size of a pond. “The +good spirits,” said Leibgeber to Peltzstiefel, “which our invalid is +beginning to exhibit again, give me very considerable hopes indeed; +though it was evidently only to please his wife that he took the soup.” +</p> + +<p> +Nobody was fonder of lying, or lied oftener, <i>out of satire</i> or humour, +than Leibgeber and no one more utterly detested serious untruthfulness +than he. He could tell a thousand lies in fun, but not two in a case of +serious necessity. For the former he had at his finger’s end every +possible deceptive trick of face and language; for the latter not one. +</p> + +<p> +In the forenoon the Schulrath and Merbitzer, the landlord, were +summoned to the bedside. “Gentlemen,” began the sick man, “I am +thinking of having my last will this afternoon—of declaring, at +Nature’s place of execution, the three things which I desire—as the +condemned in Athens were allowed to do; but what I wish to do at the +present moment is to open one of my testaments before I make my second, +or (to speak more accurately) the codicil of my first. I wish my friend +Leibgeber to pack up, and keep possession of, all my scribblings as +soon as I myself am stuck into my last addressed envelope. Further (and +in this I follow the precedent of the Danish Kings, the old Dukes of +Austria, and the noble Spaniards—of whom the first were interred in +their armour, the second in lion’s skins, the third in miserable +Capuchins’ gowns)—I will and ordain that there shall be no hesitation +about planting me in the bed of the next world in the very self-same +old pod and shell in which I have vegetated in <i>this</i>; in brief, +exactly as I am while now testating. This injunction necessitates my +making my third that the woman who comes to lay me out shall be paid, +and at once sent about her business, because all my life through I have +had a most special antipathy to two women—the woman who washes us +<i>into</i> life, and the woman who washes us <i>out</i> of it (though in a +bigger bath-tub)—the midwife and the woman who lays out the corpse. +She is not to lay a finger upon me, nor is anybody except my Henry +there.” His hatred of these servants of life and death may probably +have proceeded from the same causes as my own, namely the imperious and +rapacious nature of the controlling power which these she-planters and +caterers for the cradle and the bier exercise in squeezing us just in +the two unarmed and weaponless hours of our deepest gladness and our +deepest sorrow. +</p> + +<p> +“I further will that as soon as my face has made the signal of adieu, +Henry shall roof it over and shield it for ever with our long-necked +mask, which I brought down from the box upstairs. I also desire that, +when I take my departure from all the fields and plains of my youthful +days, and hear nothing behind me but the rustle of the haycocks of the +aftermath, I may, at all events, have my wife’s silken garland laid +upon my breast, by way of game-counter to mark the joys I have lost. A +man can’t go more suitably than with mock insignia, such as that, out +of a life which has dished him up such a number of pasteboard pasties +full of nothing but wind. Lastly, I will that, when I am gone on my +journey, nobody shall clang after me from the church-steeple (like the +people of Carlsbad), for we sick and transient watering-place visitors +of life (like those of Carlsbad) are received and sent on our way with +music from the steeples, especially as the Church’s servants are more +expensive than the Carlsbad steeple-man, who only asks three pieces for +blowing people in and out.” +</p> + +<p> +At this point he asked that Lenette’s profile-portrait might be given +him in bed, and he said, in a faltering voice, “I should like my dear +Henry and the landlord to leave the room for a minute, and let me be +alone with the Schulrath and my wife.” +</p> + +<p> +When this was done he gazed fondly, a long while, in silence, upon +the little likeness. His eyes ran over with sorrow like a broken +river-bank. He gave the picture to the Schulrath, paused, overcome by +emotion, and said at length: “To you, my faithful friend, and to you +alone, can I give this beloved portrait: you are <i>her</i> friend, as well +as mine. Oh God! there is not a soul in the great, wide world that will +take care of my dear Lenette if <i>you</i> forsake her. Don’t cry so +bitterly, my darling; he will be everything to you. Ah! dearest of +friends, this helpless, innocent heart will break in desolate +loneliness of sorrow unless <i>you</i> protect it and console it. Oh! never +abandon it, as I am doing!” +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath swore by the Almighty that he would never leave her, and +he took her hand and pressed it (without looking at her) as she wept, +and hung, with eyes raining down with tears, upon the face of his +friend, whose voice was so soon to be mute for ever. But Lenette forced +him away from her husband’s breast, and liberated her hand, and sunk +down upon the lips which had so deeply touched her heart. Firmian +clasped her with his left arm, and stretched his right hand to his +friend—thus holding to his oppressed bosom the two things on earth +that are nearest heaven, friendship and love. +</p> + +<p> +And it is even this very matter which is an endless source of comfort +and delight to me in you deluded and disagreeing mortals—that you all +love one another heartily and utterly when you only get a chance of +<i>seeing</i> one another divested of coverings and fogs—that when we fear +we are growing <i>blind</i> we are only growing <i>cold</i>—and that, as soon +as +ever Death has raised our brothers and sisters up clear of the clouds +of our own errors, our hearts melt into bliss and love when we see them +soaring as beautiful human creatures, no longer distorted by the mists +and concave mirrors of this world, up in the translucent æther; and +cannot but sigh forth, “Ah! I should <i>never</i> have misunderstood you if +I had always seen you <i>thus</i>.” This is why every loving soul stretches +its arms out to those whom poets exhibit to our low-placed eyes, as +geniuses, in their cloud-built heaven, though, could he let them sink +down upon our breasts, they would lose their beauteous transfiguration +in a few short days upon the dirty earth of our necessities and +mistakes: as the crystal glacier-water which refreshes, without +chilling, must be caught in the air as it drips from its ice-diamond, +because it is made impure by the air the moment it touches the +earth.<a name="div2Ref_87" href="#div2_87"><sup>[87]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +The Schulrath went out, but only to the doctor. This distinguished +Generalissimo of Friend Death (who did not bear the title of +“Councillor of the Supreme Board of Health” for nothing, but for money) +was very willing to come and see the patient: firstly, because the +Schulrath was a man of means and consideration; and, secondly, because +Siebenkæs in his capacity of a member of the Corpse Lottery (of which +the doctor also was a corresponding member and <i>frère servant</i>), ought +not to be allowed to die. For this burial-fund was, in one of its more +important aspects, a species of Government Savings’ Bank, or Imperial +Treasury for members of the better classes. The sight of this Supreme +Councillor of Health, advancing in battle-array, terrified Leibgeber to +death. He could not but fear that the advent of the doctor might make +matters take a more serious turn, so that Siebenkæs might transmit to +posterity a celebrity like that of Molière, who died on the stage while +performing the part of the ‘Malade Imaginaire.’ The relation between +doctor and patient seemed to him as indeterminate as that between +woodpeckers, or bark-beetles, and trees; inasmuch as it is still a moot +question whether the trees wither in consequence of these creatures +boring into them, and laying their eggs in them, or if (on the +contrary) it is because the bark is worm-eaten and the trunk dead, that +the beetles come flying to the trees. My opinion as regards beetles and +woodpeckers (and doctors as well) is that each is alternately cause and +effect; and that there is no such thing as a living creature whose +existence can possibly be taken as pre-supposing decay, because, if so, +at the creation of the world there would have had to be a dead horse +created for the bluebottles, and a rotten cheese for the mites. +</p> + +<p> +Well, Dr. Œlhafen (of the Supreme Board of Health) marched straight +up to the sick man (shooting past the one who was not sick, with angry +rudeness), and instantly swooped upon life’s seconds’-hand, the medical +divining-rod, the pulse. Leibgeber set the plough of satirical anger +into the soil of his face, ploughed crooked furrows, and determined +upon a course of deep subsoil-ploughing. +</p> + +<p> +“This,” said the professor of the healing art, “is a case of genuine +nervous apoplexy, supervening on an undue determination of blood to the +head, and a plethora of the vessels. There ought to have been medical +attendance at a much earlier stage of the case; the full, hard pulse +threatens a repetition of the attack. An emetic powder, which I shall +prescribe, will, in the circumstances, produce the best possible +effect.” And with this he pulled out some emetic <i>billets-doux</i>, +wrapped up like <i>bonbons</i>. This preparation was one which he kept for +sale himself, hawking it about from house to house like a Jew pedlar. +There were few diseases to which he did not apply these emetics +of his by way of “means of grace,” screwjacks, pump handles, and +purgatorial fire; but he worked them most assiduously of all in +apoplexy chest-inflammation, headache, and bilious fever. What he said +was that he “began by clearing the principal passages,” and in so doing +he occasionally cleared the proprietor of said principal passages out +of this world, so that he found himself passing through the final +“passage” of all flesh. +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber kneaded his odd visage into a new form, and said, “There +seems nothing, Doctor Œlhafen (my colleague and <i>protomedicus</i>), to +prevent our holding our <i>concilium</i>, or <i>consilium</i>, or <i>collegium +medicum</i>, here where we stand. I cannot but think that my sedative +powder had a good effect, seeing that it restored <i>apoplectico</i> there +the power of speech, yesterday.” The <i>protomedicus</i> took Leibgeber for +some quack, and without so much as letting his eyes touch his +colleague, said to Peltzstiefel, “Will you get them to bring some warm +water, and I will give him the powder myself.” “He and I will take it +both together,” burst in Leibgeber, in anger; “<i>both</i> our gall-bladders +are acting at present; the <i>patient</i> shan’t, won’t, and mustn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you a regular practitioner, Sir?” asked the Councillor of the +Supreme Board of Health, with contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a Jubilee Doctor, or Doctor Jubilant, and have been so ever since +I ceased being a fool. You no doubt remember in Haller the case of the +fool who thought his head was off, until they cured him by putting a +lead hat on to him. A head roofed and insulated with lead has about as +distinct a sense of individuality as one cast in that metal. I was very +nearly in the same boat with that fool myself, brother colleague. I had +inflammation of the brain, and did not find out so soon as I should +have done that it had been put out, and cured. To make a long tale +short, I fancied that my head had peeled away (or shall I call it +‘exfoliated,’ or ‘desquamated’), just as one’s feet moulder and drop +off, like crab’s claws, when one takes too much ergot. When the barber +came in, and threw down his purple tool-bag, or quiver, I said, ‘My +dear Surgeon-General Spœrl, it may be perfectly true that flies, +tortoises, and adders have been known to go on living after their heads +were off, as I do, but there wasn’t much on them to shave. A man of +your sense must see that it is as impossible to shave <i>me</i> as to shave +the Torso at Rome—where were you thinking of <i>soaping</i> me, Mr. +Spœrl? Scarce was he out of the door when in came the wig-maker. +‘Another time, Mr. Peisser,’ said I, ‘unless you propose to curl the +circumambient air around me, or the hair on my chest, you can put your +combs back into your waistcoat pocket. Since twelve o’clock last night +I have been carrying on existence without either frieze or cornice, +and, like the tower of Babel, I have no cupola. But if you will go and +see whether you can find my head in the next room there, and put a +<i>queue</i> and a <i>toupée</i> on to that <i>caput mortuum</i> of mine, I +should +have no objection to that, and I don’t mind wearing the head by a way +of a <i>queue</i>-wig.’ By good luck in came the Rector Magnificus. He was a +doctor, and saw what distress I was in, when I smote my hands together +and cried, ‘Where are my four brain chambers and my <i>corpus callosum</i>, +my <i>anus cerebri</i>, and my uniform <i>centrum</i> (which, according to +Gläser, is the seat of the imagination)? How can a Rump Parliament wear +spectacles, or use ear trumpets? The reasons are obvious. Is it come to +this with the monæcius head of the world, that it has <i>no</i> head left +for a seed-vessel?’ But the Rector Magnificus sent to the University +wardrobe for an old, tight-fitting, doctor’s hat; he put it on me with +a gentle push, and said, ‘The faculty never places a doctor’s hat on +anything but a head; it could not possibly put it on to a nothing.’ And +this hat made a new head grow on to my imagination, like a decapitated +snail’s. And ever since I was cured myself. I have taken to curing +other people.” +</p> + +<p> +The Board of Health councillor turned a basilisk’s eyeball away from +Leibgeber, and lowered himself downstairs by the ribbon of his cane +like a bale of merchandize, omitting to pocket his emetic permit for +the world to come, which the patient had, consequently, to pay for. +</p> + +<p> +But our good Henry had another war to wage with Stiefel and Lenette, +until Firmian threw himself between them as mediator, with the +assurance that he would have sent the powder packing in any case, +because it would have been anything but good for an old pain in his +heart (alas! he spoke figuratively), and two or three Gordian knots in +his lungs (the “knots of the plot of his earthly drama”). +</p> + +<p> +But all this time, however good a face he might put on matters, there +was no concealing the fact that he was steadily growing worse. The +<i>ricochet</i> of the apoplectic shot was clearly imminent, and to be +looked for at any moment. “It is time I made my will,” he said. “I long +ardently for the Notary Public.” This functionary, as is well known, +has the drawing up of all last wills and testaments, according to the +laws of Kuhschnappel. At length he arrived, Bærstel by name, a +shrivelled and dried-up snail of a man, with a round, shy, listening +button-face, all hunger, anxiety, and attention. Many people thought +his flesh was merely smeared over his bones, like the new Swedish +<i>carton pierre</i>. “What is it your pleasure to have written to-day, +Sir?” began Bærstel. “One of my pretty little codicils,” said +Siebenkæs. “But before we begin hadn’t you better try me with a +catch-question or two, as is usually done with testators, to find out +(without letting me know what you are at, you understand) whether I am +all right in my head?” “Do you know who <i>I</i> am, Sir?” said Bærstel. +“You are Mr. Bærstel, Notary Public,” answered the patient. “Not only +is that quite correct,” answered Bærstel, “but it renders it quite +clear that you are wandering very little, if at all, and we may proceed +at once to draw up your testament.” +</p> + +<h3>LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF SIEBENKÆS,<br/> +POOR’S ADVOCATE.</h3> + +<p> +“The undersigned, now yellowing and falling from the tree with the rest +of the August apples, desires, being thus nigh to death, which looses +the spirit from the thraldom of the body, to execute a few more merry +back-steps, sidesteps, and Sir-Roger-de Coverleys, three minutes before +the Basle dance of Death begins.” +</p> + +<p> +The notary paused, and asked in amazement, “Am I to put this stuff, and +more like it, down upon paper?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Imprimis</i>, I, Firmian Siebenkæs, alias Heinrich Leibgeber, do hereby +will and ordain that my guardian the Heimlicher von Blaise shall (and +must) pay over, within a year and day after my decease, to my friend, +Mr. Leibgeber, inspector in Vaduz,<a name="div2Ref_88" href="#div2_88"><sup>[88]</sup></a> the 12,000 florins of trust +money whereof he has godlessly defrauded me, his ward: the said Mr. +Leibgeber making over the same hereafter faithfully to my beloved wife. +In the event of the said Herr von Blaise declining so to do, I here +lift up my hand and swear, upon my dying bed, that after I have +departed this life I will pursue him, not legally, but spiritually, and +will terrify him by appearing to him, either as the devil or as a tall +white man, or by my voice merely, according as my circumstances, after +my decease, may permit.” +</p> + +<p> +The notary’s feathered arm hovered in air, and he ceased not to shrink +and shudder with terror. “All I am afraid of,” he said, “is that if I +write down things of this kind, the Heimlicher will get hold of me.” +But Leibgeber, with face and body, barred his retreat through that +hell-gate, the door of the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Further, as reigning sovereign of the shooter’s company, I will and +ordain that no war of succession shall convert my testament into a +powder of succession for innocent people. Further, that the republic of +Kuhschnappel (into the office of Gonfaloniere and Doge whereof I was +balloted with rifle bullets) shall wage no defensive war, seeing that +it cannot defend itself if it does—but offensive wars only, with the +object of enlarging the boundaries of its territories, they not being +easy to protect. And that its members may, in their generation, be as +wood-economising as their country and royal burgh’s father has been in +his. Now-a-days, when forests are burned to charcoal faster than they +grow again, the only thing to be done is to warm <i>the climate</i> a good +deal, and turn it into a great brooding-oven, kiln, and field-oven, so +as to save the trouble, and obviate the necessity, of having stoves in +the houses. And this has been in some measure attended to by careful +Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who have cleared away the forests +as much as they could, they being full of late winter. When one thinks +how very beautifully modern Germany contrasts with that which Tacitus +mapped, warmed as it is by the mere cutting down of the forests, we +have little difficulty in feeling convinced that a time will come when, +there being no more timber at all, we shall arrive at such a +temperature that the atmosphere itself shall be our fur pelisse. The +reason the present superfluity is burnt to ashes as rapidly as possible +is, that the price of raft-wood may be raised, just as a million +<i>livres</i>’ worth of nutmegs were publicly burnt at Amsterdam in 1760, to +prevent the price from falling. +</p> + +<p> +“Moreover, as King of the Kuhschnappelian Jerusalem, it is my desire +that the senate and people thereof (senatus, populusque +Kuhschnappeliensis) be not damned, but contrariwise blessed, +particularly in this present world. Further, that the town magnates may +not devour the Kuhschnappelian nests (houses) as they do the Indian +ones, and that the taxes, though they have to pass through the four +stomachs of the tax-gatherers,<a name="div2Ref_89" href="#div2_89"><sup>[89]</sup></a> may nevertheless issue thence +converted from milky chyle into red blood (from silver into gold), and +after circulating through the lacteals and the thoracic duct, be +impelled in due course into the veins of the body politic. Further, I +will and appoint that the greater and the lesser council——” +</p> + +<p> +The notary would fain have stopped here, and shook his head most +energetically, but Leibgeber was playing with the rifle with which the +testator had elevated himself to the throne of the marksman (whereas it +is upon leaping-poles consisting of <i>other men’s</i> ramrods that thrones +are usually attained to), and Bærstel wrote on in the sweat of his +brow. +</p> + +<p> +“That the mayor, the treasurer, the Heimlicher, the eight members of +council, and the serjeant of court, may listen to reason, and reward no +merit but that of other people. And that the rascal Blaise, and the +scoundrel Meyern may daily lay castigatory hands upon each other, as +relations, so that there may at all events always be one to punish the +other.” +</p> + +<p> +Here the notary jumped up, declared it took his breath away, and went +to the window to get a little air. And as he saw that there was a pile +of tanner’s bark within easy shot of the window-sill, his terror, +shoving at him from behind, impelled him up on to the sill in question. +Having taken this <i>first</i> step, before a testament witness could seize +him by the coat-tails, he made a <i>second</i> (and long) one out into the +open air, so as to be in a position to reach that modelling-table the +heap of bark. Being thus a falling artist (not a rising one), he could +do no better on his arrival there than make use of his face as a +graving-tool, plastic “form,” and copying machine, and execute +therewith a faint bas-relief impression of himself upon the heap of +tan. His fingers worked busily as graving-tools, making copies of +themselves, whilst, as a matter of pure accident, he countersigned +this, his report of the incident, with his notarial seal, which he had +taken with him in his descent. So easy is it for one notary to create +another, like a Count Palatine. But Bærstel left his co-notary and the +entire <i>lusus naturæ</i> behind him, thinking on his homeward way of +matters of a wholly different kind. Stiefel and Leibgeber, again, +looked out of window, and (the notary having vanished, bag and +baggage,) gazed upon his <i>second</i> outward man as it lay outstretched +before them upon its anatomical theatre, smelling of Russia leather. +Concerning which the author will not add another word of his own, but +only these of Henry’s. +</p> + +<p> +“The notary wished to seal the testament with a larger seal than +usual—one which nobody might forge—so he sealed it with his own body, +and there we see the sphragistic impression all complete.” +</p> + +<p> +The will, such as it was, was duly subscribed by the witnesses and by +the testator, and anything but a demi-military testament of this kind +was scarcely to be expected in the circumstances. Evening was now +drawing on,—the time when sick and sorry man turns him from the sun +(as does the earth he dwells on), and <i>towards</i> the twilight evening +star of the other world,—when the <i>sick</i> pass away to the latter, and +the well gaze at the former—and when Firmian thought to give his wife +the long kiss of parting, and then begin slowly sinking. But +unfortunately Deacon Revel (the assistant preacher) came rustling in in +an electrically stormy fashion. He came arrayed in his ecclesiastical +armour, gorget, sash, and all, to administer a befitting rebuke to the +invalid (round whose neck he had tied the band of matrimony in a double +knot) for trying to evade payment of the confession fee—that toll for +the communion of the sick and sound on the highway between heaven and +hell. As (on the authority of Linnæus) the ancient botanists—a Croll, +Porta, Helvetius, Fabricius—thought that certain plants which had more +or less resemblance to particular illnesses were remedies for these +complaints, prescribing yellow plants, such as saffron and turmeric, +for jaundice, dragon’s-blood and catechu for dysentery, cabbage-heads +for headache (as well as prickly things, such as fish-bones, for +stitches in the side), so, in the hands of able Gospel ministers, the +spiritual <i>materia medica</i>, such as sermons and admonitions, assume the +appearance of the spiritual maladies for whose cure they are +administered—anger, pride, avarice, and so on. Thus there is often no +difference, but one of condition, between the bed-ridden patient and +his physician. This was the case with Revel. One of his great objects +in life was, in an age when people are so prone to defame the Lutheran +clergy by calling them mere Jesuits in disguise, or monks, to give the +most unmistakable proof, more by deeds than by words, that he was, at +all events, none of <i>the latter</i> (who call nothing their own, and are +not allowed to possess property), and for that reason to be at all +times on the hunt, and on the snatch, after worldly possessions. Hoseas +Leibgeber did his best to make himself a barrier-rope and turnstile for +the parson, and stopped him on the threshold, saying, “I fear it won’t +be of much use; I tried my own hand yesterday at converting and +recoining him flying, (if I may use the expression,) post-haste, <i>volti +subito citissime</i>, but all that came of it was that he threw it in my +teeth that I wasn’t converted <i>myself</i>—and no more I am. There are +whole flocks of heretical singing-birds pecking away at the summer +rape-seed of <i>my</i> opinions.” Revel answered (vacillating between a +major mode and a minor), “A servant of the Lord bides his time, keeps +diligent watch, and does the duty of his sacred calling, striving to +save souls—from atheism, as well as from other sin. The <i>event</i> +concerns the sinner, and the sinner only.” +</p> + +<p> +So this black storm cloud, charged to the brim with Sinai-lightnings, +rolled on into the dim-lit chamber; the parson waved his great, +flapping gown-sleeve, like a standard of spiritual healing and +rehabilitation, over the atheist (as <i>he</i> thought him) stretched on his +bed, and told him in a “sick-bed exhortation” (which is generally the +very antipodes of a funeral sermon)—in a “sick-bed exhortation” (I +say) such as may one day overtake me and my reader under our last +bed-cover, and which I shall therefore avoid sending all the way from +Bayreuth to Heidelberg to be put in type, since it may be heard <i>en +route</i> going on in any sick-chamber. At the same time he <i>told</i> him, in +the said sick-bed exhortation to his face, like a plain-speaking, +straight-forward man, that he was a roast for the devil’s table, just +done to a turn, and ready to be dished and served. The roast (thus +pronounced to be done to a turn), closed his eyes, and endured it. +But Henry, whom it pained to see the parson pinching the ears and the +heart whom he loved with red-hot pincers, and who was furious at the +thought that it was done solely to frighten the sick man into the +Confessional—Henry seized his waving arm, and gently reminded him— +</p> + +<p> +“I did not think it would have been very polite, Mr. Kevel, to mention +it before—but the patient’s hearing is a good deal impaired. You will +find you will be obliged to scream. He has not heard a syllable you +have said up to this point. Mr. Siebenkæs, do you know who this is? You +see how little he hears. Set to work now at converting <i>me</i>, over a +glass of beer—I should prefer that very much, and <i>I</i> hear a great +deal better. I’m very much afraid he has a touch of delirium, and, if +he sees you at all, thinks you are the devil—for it is with <i>him</i> that +the dying have to fence their last bout. It’s a pity he didn’t know +what you were saying. He would have been very angry and annoyed—(for +confess he will <i>not</i>)—and on the authority of Haller, in the 8th +volume of his ‘Physiology, a proper amount of annoyance and vexation +has often been known to add weeks to a dying person’s life. But, after +all, he <i>is</i> a <i>kind</i> of a true Christian, after a fashion, when all’s +said, although he no more dreams of <i>confessing</i> than any of the +Apostles did, or the fathers either. When he is gone, you shall hear +from my own lips how peacefully a true Christian passes away—no +convulsions—no contortions—no agonies of death. He is as completely +at home in the world of spirits as the screech-owl is in the village +steeple—and just as the owl sits in the belfry while the bells are +ringing, I will be bound that our Advocate will never stir when the +death-bell tolls for him—for he has acquired, from your sermons, the +conviction that he will go on living after he dies.” +</p> + +<p> +In the above speech there was some pretty hard hitting, in the shape of +jest, at Firmian’s mock death, as well as at his faith in immortality; +such jests, in fact, as none but a Firmian could both understand and +pardon. But Leibgeber was, at the same time, making an attack, in all +seriousness, on those good people who believe accidental, physical +tranquillity in dying to be tranquillity of soul, and bodily struggles +to be storms of conscience. +</p> + +<p> +Revel contented himself with replying, “You are of those who sit in the +seat of the scorner—whom the Lord will find. I have washed my hands.” +But as he would have infinitely preferred <i>filling</i> them, and, +moreover, could not succeed in transforming this child of the devil +into a confessing penitent, he took his departure, red and silent, +escorted downstairs by Lenette and Stiefel with many deferential +curtseys and bows. +</p> + +<p> +Let us not make out Henry’s gall-bladder (which is likewise his +swimming-bladder, and, alas! often his ascending <i>globus hystericus</i>) +to be any bigger than it really is. Let us form a judgment, all the +more favourable, of this natural foible of his from considering than +Henry had, in the course of his previous career, seen spiritual <i>frères +terribles</i>, and gallows preachers of this sort, strewing salt upon the +faint, withered hearts on so many deathbeds; and because it was his +belief (as it is mine) that of all the hours of a man’s life his last +must be the most indifferent as regards religion, inasmuch as it the +most unfruitful, and no seed can sprout in it which will bear any fruit +of action. +</p> + +<p> +During the brief absence of the courteous couple, Firmian said, “Oh! I +am sick, sick, and weary of it all. I <i>cannot</i> carry on the joke any +longer. In ten minutes more I intend to lie my last lie, and die—and +would to GOD it were not a lie. Don’t let them bring in any lights, but +cover me up at once with the mask, for I see very plainly that I shall +not be able to control these eyes of mine, and when the mask is on, I +shall, at all events, be able to let them weep as much as they like. +Ah! Henry, my good, kind friend!” +</p> + +<p> +The infusory chaos of Revel’s exhortation had made this weary +<i>figurant</i> and mimicker of Death tender and grave. Henry—out of his +delicate and loving solicitude—had undertaken all the lying parts of +the <i>rôle</i>, and enacted those himself. He therefore (as the couple were +coming back into the room), cried out, in a loud, anxious voice, +“Firmian, how do you feel now?” “Better,” said Firmian, in a voice of +emotion. “There are stars shining in this world’s night, though I, +alas! am clamped to the dust, and cannot soar up to them. The bank of +the lovely spring-time of eternity is steep, and, close as we day-flies +are swimming to the shore of Life’s Dead Sea, we have not got our wings +yet.” Yes! Death—sublime and glorious after sunset-sky of our St. +Thomas’s Day—grand amen of our hope, spoken to our ears from the other +world—would come to our beds in the likeness of a beautiful giant, +with a garland on his brow, and lift us gently up into the æther, and +rock us there to rest, were it not that we go to him only as maimed, +stunned creatures, who are <i>thrown</i> into his giant arms. What robs +Death of his glory is sickness; the pinions of the soul when it rises +on its heavenward flight are heavy, and stained with blood, and tears, +and mire. The only time when death is a flight—not a fall—is when +some hero is smitten by one, single, mortal wound, when, as he stands +like a spring-world, all new blossom, and old fruit, the next world +suddenly flashes by him, like some comet, bearing him (miniature world +as he is) all unwithered, along with it in its flight, to soar with it +beyond the sun. +</p> + +<p> +But this mental exaltation of Firmian’s would have been an indication +of reviving strength and returning health to sharper eyes than +Stiefel’s. It is upon the <i>looker-on</i> only—not upon the victim who is +smitten down—that the battle-axe of Death casts a flash of light. It +is with the death-bell as with other bells; it is those who are <i>at a +distance</i> who hear the solemn, inspiring boom and music—not those who +are <i>within</i> the sounding hemisphere. And as every bosom grows more +sincere and more transparent in the hour of death—like the Siberian +glass-apple, the kernel of which, when ripe, is covered only by a +crystal case formed of sweet, transparent flesh—so Firmian, in +this dithyrambic hour—near as he was to the bare edge of Death’s +sickle—could have gladly sacrificed (that is, discovered) all the +mystery and blossom of his future, but that by so doing he would have +broken his word and grieved his friend. But nothing was left him now, +save a patient heart, dumb lips, and weeping eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Alas! and were not all his ostensible farewells <i>real</i> ones after all? +As he drew his Henry and the Schulrath to his heart with trembling +hands, was that heart not oppressed by the mournful certainty of losing +the Schulrath on the morrow, and Henry in a week’s time, for ever? So +that the following address which he made to them was nothing but the +plain truth, mournful though it was. “Alas! we shall be scattered +asunder by the four winds of heaven in a very, very little time. Ah! +human arms are rotten bands. How short a time they hold! May all be +well with you—and better than I ever deserved it might be with me. May +the chaotic stone-heaps of your lives never come rolling down about +your feet, or about your ears—may spring overspread the crags and +cliffs around you with berries, and the freshest green! Good night for +ever, dearly loved Schulrath, and you, my Henry!” He pressed the latter +to his heart in silence, thinking how near the veritable parting was. +</p> + +<p> +But he should have avoided stimulating his heart into feverish +excitement by these pricks and stings of farewell, for he heard Lenette +mourning out of sight behind the bed, and (with a deep death-wound in +his overflowing heart) said, “Come, my beloved Lenette, and bid me +good-bye;” and stretched out his arms in a wild manner to receive her. +She came tottering, and sank into them, and on to his heart, while he +was speechless under the crushing weight of his emotions; till at +length, as she lay there trembling, he said, in a low voice, “Ah! poor, +patient, faithful, tortured soul! how constantly and unceasingly have I +caused you sorrow! Will you forgive me? Will you forget me?” (A spasm +of sorrow clasped her closer to him.) “Ah! do <i>but</i> forget me, and +forget me <i>quite</i>; for heaven knows you have never been happy with me!” +Their voices were lost in sobs, only their tears could flow. A drawing, +thirsting grief was grinding at his weary heart, and he went on: “No, +no; with <i>me</i> you have truly had nothing, nothing but tears; but there +are happy days coming for you, when I shall be gone from you.” He gave +her his parting kiss, saying, “Live happy now, and let me be gone!” +“But you are <i>not</i> going to die,” she cried again and again, with a +thousand tears. He put his arms about her, he gently raised her +fainting form from his breast, and said, very solemnly, “It is over +now. Fate has sundered us; it is over and past.” +</p> + +<p> +Henry gently led her weeping away; and he cried himself, too; and +cursed his plot; and signed to the Schulrath, saying, “Firmian needs +rest now.” The latter turned his face, swollen and drawn with pain, to +the wall. Lenette and Stiefel were mourning together in the other room. +Henry waited till the greater billows had subsided somewhat, and then +quietly put the question: “Now?” Firmian gave the signal, and Henry +yelled out, “Oh! he is gone!” like a man beside himself; and threw +himself down upon the motionless body (to prevent anybody from touching +it), with genuine, bitter tears at the thought of the nearness of +parting. An inconsolable couple came bursting from the next room. +Lenette would have thrown herself upon her husband (whose face was +turned away), and she cried, in agony, “I must see him; I must bid my +husband good-bye once more.” But Henry told the Schulrath +(confidentially) to take hold of her, and support her, and get her away +out of the room. The two former things he was able to accomplish +(although his <i>own</i> self-control was only an artificial one, assumed +with the view of demonstrating the victory of religion over +philosophy), but get her out of the room he could not. When she saw +Henry take up the mask of death, “No, no,” she cried; “I insist upon +being allowed to see my husband once more.” But Henry took the mask, +gently turned Firmian’s face (on which the tears of parting were scarce +yet dry), and covered it up, thus hiding it for ever from his wife’s +weeping eyes. This grand scene lifted up his heart; he gazed upon the +mask and said, “Death lays a mask like this over all our faces; and a +time will come when <i>I</i> shall stretch me out in death’s midnight sleep +as <i>he</i> has done, and grow longer and heavier. Ah! poor Firmian! has +that war game of yours been worth the candles and the trouble? We are +not the <i>players</i>, it is true; we are the things <i>played with</i>: and +old Death sends our heads and hearts rolling like balls over the green +billiard-table, and pockets them in his corpse-sack; and every time one +of us is pocketed there, the death-bell gives a toll. It is true you go +on living in a sense<a name="div2Ref_90" href="#div2_90"><sup>[90]</sup></a> (if the frescoes of ideas can be detached from +the walls of the body), and oh! may you be happier in that postscript +life than in this. But what is it, this postscript life, after all? +<i>It</i> will go out too; every life, on every world-ball, will burn out +one day. The planets are licensed only to retail liquor to be drunk on +the premises. They can’t board and lodge us; they merely pour us out a +glass of quince-wine, currant-juice, spirits; but for the most part +<i>gargles</i> of <i>good</i> wine (which we must not swallow), or else +sympathetic ink (i. e. <i>liquor probatorius</i>), sleeping-draughts, and +acids; and then, on we go, from one planet-inn to another; and so from +millennium to millennium. Oh! thou kind heaven; and whither, whither, +whither? +</p> + +<p> +“However, this earth is the wretchedest village tap-room of the lot; a +place where mostly beggars, rogues, and deserters turn in, and which we +have always to go five steps <i>away</i> from to <i>enjoy</i> our best +pleasures; +that is to say, either into memory or into imagination. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! peaceful being there at rest, may it fare better with you in other +taverns than here; and may some restaurateur of life open the door of a +wine-cellar for you in <i>lieu</i> of this vinegar-cellar!” +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">DR. ŒLHAFEN AND MEDICAL BOOT AND SHOEMAKING—THE BURIAL +SOCIETY—A DEATH’S HEAD IN THE SADDLE—FREDERICK II. AND HIS +FUNERAL ORATION. +</p> + +<p> +As a step preliminary to everything else, Leibgeber quartered the +sorrowing widow down stairs with the hairdresser, with the view of +rendering the intermediate state after death easier to the dead man. +“You must emigrate,” he told her, “and keep out of the sight of these +sad memorials round us here, until <i>he</i> has been taken away.” +Superstitious terror made her consent, so that he had no difficulty in +giving the dear departed his food and drink. He compared him to a +walled-up vestal, finding in her cell a lamp, bread, water, milk, and +oil (according to Plutarch, in ‘Numa’); and added, “Unless you are more +like the earwig, which, when cut in two, turns about and devours its +own remains.” By jokes like these he brightened (or, at all events, +strove to brighten) the cloudy and autumnal soul of his dear friend, +who could see nothing all around him save ruins of his bygone life, +from the widowed Lenette’s clothes to her work. The bonnet-block, which +he had struck on the day of the thunder-storm, had to be put away in a +corner out of his sight, because he said it made Gorgon faces at him. +</p> + +<p> +Next day, our good corpse-watcher, Leibgeber, had to perform the +labours of a Hercules, an Ixion, and a Sisyphus combined. Congress +after congress, picket after picket, came to see the dead man and speak +well of him—for it is not until they make their <i>exit</i> that we applaud +men and actors, and we think people are <i>morally</i> beautified by death +as Lavater thought they were physically. But Leibgeber drove everybody +away from the death-chamber, saying it had been one of his friend’s +last requests that he should do so. +</p> + +<p> +Then came the woman to lay out the corpse (Death’s Abigail), and wanted +to begin washing and dressing it. Henry tussled with her, paid her, and +banished her. Then (in presence of the widow and Peltzstiefel), he had +to pretend to <i>be</i> pretending to hide a bleeding heart behind outward +resignation. “But I see through him,” said Stiefel, “without the +slightest trouble. It is because he is not a Christian that he is +striving to play the Stoic and the Philosopher.” Stiefel was here +alluding to that specious, empty, and frivolous hardness which is +exhibited by Zenos of the world and of the court, who are like those +wooden figures which are made to look like stone statues and pillars by +being smeared over with a coating of stone-dust. Also the share, or +dividend, of the burial-fund was got together (by being collected on a +plate from the members of that body), and this led to its coming to the +knowledge of our old acquaintance Dr. Œlhafen, who was one of the +paying members. He took occasion, on his morning round of visits, to +drop in at the house of mourning, with the view of provoking his +brother in science to as great an extent as he could. He therefore +affected not to have heard a word about the death, and began by asking +how the invalid was getting on. “According to the <i>latest</i> bulletins,” +said Henry, “he is not <i>getting</i> on at all—he has <i>got</i> on; in a +word, +Herr Protomedicus Œlhafen, he is gone. August, March, and December +are months when Death sends out his pressgang and gathers in his +vintage.” +</p> + +<p> +“That lowering powder of yours,” said the vindictive Doctor, “seems to +have lowered <i>his</i> temperature pretty effectively; he’s cool enough +<i>now</i>, eh?” This pained Leibgeber, and he answered, “I am sorry to say, +he is. However, we did our best with him. We got your emetic down his +throat, but the only thing he got rid of was that most terribly +morbific of all matters in man—his soul. You, Mr. Protomedicus, are +judge in a criminal court, having the power of life and death; whereas, +you see, I am only an advocate, and possessed of a jurisdiction so far +inferior that <i>I</i> didn’t dare meddle with anything, least of all the +fellow’s <i>life</i>; a nice face he would have made if I had.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, so he <i>has</i> made a face at it, and a long face, too—the +hippocratic face,” answered the Doctor, not wholly without wit. “I +can’t but believe you,” answered Leibgeber, in a gentle manners “I have +not the least doubt you are perfectly right. We laymen, you see, have +so few opportunities of seeing those faces, whereas doctors can study +the hippocratic countenance in their patients every day of their lives. +And, of course, an experienced doctor is always distinguished by a +quickness of eye which enables him to tell at a glance if a patient be +going to die—which is an impossibility to other people, who, not being +doctors in practice, have not many opportunities of seeing people +depart this life.” +</p> + +<p> +“A medical connoisseur of <i>your</i> cultivation and experience as a matter +of course put mustard poultices to the patient’s feet? Only, I presume, +it was too late for them to be of any use, was it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>did</i> manage to hit upon the notion of trying that trick of soling +my poor friend’s feet with mustard and vinegar” (answered Leibgeber), +“and paper-hanging the calves of his legs with blisters; but the +patient (at all times rather fond of his joke, as you know), called +that sort of thing ‘medical boot and shoemaking,’ and called us +doctors ‘Death’s shoemakers,’ who, when Nature has cried to a poor +fellow ‘Look out! Mind your head!’ go and put Spanish flies on to him +by way of Spanish boots, mustard-plasters by way of <i>Cothurni</i>, and +cupping-glasses by way of leg-irons: as if a man could not make +his appearance in the next world without red heels consisting of +mustard-blister marks, and red cardinal stockings of plaster blisters. +And so saying, the deceased aimed a skilful kick at my face and the +plaster, and said the connoisseurs were like stinging-flies, which +always fasten upon the legs.” +</p> + +<p> +“He wasn’t far wrong, I suspect, as regarded <i>you</i>. A ‘shoemaker of +Death’ might perhaps put something on just under that <i>caput tribus +insanabile</i> of yours which wouldn’t fit so badly,” said the Doctor, and +made off as fast as he could. +</p> + +<p> +I have already said a few words concerning those emetic powders of his, +and I now wish to add what follows. If he <i>does</i> send people to their +long homes by means of them, the chief difference between him and a +fox<a name="div2Ref_91" href="#div2_91"><sup>[91]</sup></a> is that (according to the ancient naturalist), the latter +imitates the distant sound of a man being sick to make the dogs run to +him, that he may attack them. At the same time even those whose opinion +of the members of the medical profession is the highest conceivable +must admit that there are certain limits to their criminal +jurisdiction. As by European International Law, no army can shoot down +another with glass bullets, or poisoned ones, but only with leaden +ones—further, as no nation may put poison into the enemies’ food, or +wells, but only dirt—so, although the medical police allow a +practising physician (of the higher jurisdiction) the utmost freedom in +the administration of narcotics, drastics, emetics, diuretics, and the +whole pharmacopœia, in a word (so that it would be a breach of the +police regulations to attempt to prevent him), yet were the most +celebrated of doctors, town or country, within the limits of his +jurisdiction to set to work and give people poison-balls in place of +pills, or ratsbane by way of a strong emetic, the upper courts of +justice would take a pretty serious view of the matter—unless it were +for ague that he prescribed the mouse-poison. Nay, I suspect that an +entire medical <i>collegium</i> would scarce escape some judicial inquiry if +it were to take a sword and run a man through with it (though it might +open his veins with a lancet at any hour of the day or night if it +pleased), or if it were to knock him down with a warlike but +nonsurgical instrument. Thus we find in the criminal records that +doctors who threw people into the water from bridges have by no means +got clear off—that being a different affair altogether from putting +them into a <i>smaller</i> bath, mineral or otherwise. +</p> + +<p> +When the hairdresser heard that the corpse-lottery money had safely +arrived in its harbour of refuge, he came upstairs and offered to curl +his deceased lodger’s hair, make him a pigtail, and let his comb and +pomatum accompany him under the sod. Leibgeber was obliged to be +economical on the poor widow’s account, for more than half her feathers +were plucked out of her already by the innumerable insect-feelers, +vultures’-talons, and boars’-tusks of the domestics of death, and he +said the most he could do was to buy the comb and put it in the +deceased’s waistcoat-pocket, so that he might do it himself after his +own taste. He said the same to the barber, and added that, of course, +as hair goes on growing in the grave, the whole secret society (and +fruit-bearing society) therein is adorned with fine beards, like Swiss +of the age of sixty. These two collaborateurs in hair (who revolve +round the same central-sphere like two of the satellites of Uranus) +went off with abbreviated hopes, and elongated faces and purses, the +one wishing, in the excess of his gratitude, that he had at that moment +the shaving of the undertaker Henry, the other wishing <i>he</i> had the +cutting of his hair. On the stairs they grumbled out, “It would be no +wonder if the dead man should not be able to rest in his grave, +but went about frightening people.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber thought of the risk there was of losing the reward of all +this long process of deception, should anybody go to have a look at the +deceased gentleman while he was in the next room (for whenever he was +going further he locked the door). So he went to the churchyard, took a +skull out of the charnel-house, and brought it home under his coat. He +handed it to Siebenkæs, saying, “If we were to shove this head in +beneath the green trellis-bed whereon <i>defunctus</i> is lying, and keep it +connected with his hand by means of a green-silk thread, it might be +brought into play (in the dark, at all events), as a species of +Belidor’s globe of compression, or jawbone of an ass as against +Philistines, who have got to be frightened away if they come disturbing +the repose of the warm dead.” To be sure (had the most extreme +necessity to do so arisen) Siebenkæs would have come to himself, +revived out of his prolonged insensibility, and repeated his apoplectic +seizure for the third time—much to the gratification of medical +systems of theory. However, the death’s head was better than the fit. +The sight of this garret-lodging of a soul, this cold hatching-oven of +a spirit, made Siebenkæs sad. He said, “No doubt the wall-creeper finds +a quieter and safer nest here than did the bird-of-paradise,<a name="div2Ref_92" href="#div2_92"><sup>[92]</sup></a> which +has flown away from it.” +</p> + +<p> +Leibgeber now chaffered with the servants of the Church and School, +and (with whispered curses) paid the necessary surplice-fees and +bridge-tolls, saying, “The day after tomorrow we will lay the deceased +to rest as quietly as we may, without fuss or ceremony.” It was a +matter of indifference to them; all <i>they</i> cared about being the +pocketing of the postage which franks people into the next world, +which they were all glad enough to do—all except one old and poor +School-servant, who said he thought it a sin to take a farthing from +the poor widow, for he knew what poverty was. But this was exactly what +the rich could not know. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning, Henry went down to the hairdresser and Lenette, leaving +the key in the door—for, since the recent ghost story, the lodgers who +lived upstairs were too frightened to put so much as their heads out of +their own doors. The hairdresser, who was still annoyed that he had not +been allowed to curl the deceased’s hair, bethought him that it would +at least be something if he were to slip upstairs, and cut and carry +off the entire hair-forest. The demand for hair and firewood is in +excess of the supply (now that the former is made into rings and +twisted into letters), and we should never leave any dead person a +coffin or a single hair. Even the ancients sheared off the latter for +the altars of the subterranean gods; so Meerbitzer crept on tiptoe into +the room, and opened his scissor-feelers. Siebenkæs could easily look +askew into the room through the eye-holes of the mask, and from the +scissors and general aspect of his landlord, he divined the impending +misfortune and ‘Rape of the Lock.’ He saw that in his strait he could +reckon more upon the bare head under the bed than upon his own. The +landlord, who, in his timidity, had carefully left the door wide +open behind him to secure his retreat, drew near to the plantation of +human pot-plants, with intent to play the part of reaper in the +harvest-month—to combine the <i>rôles</i> of beard-shearer and hair-curler, +and avenge them both. Siebenkæs wound up the thread as well as he could +upon his covered fingers, so as to roll out the skull; but as the +latter came much too slowly, and Meerbitzer far too quickly, he was +obliged to come to his own assistance in the meantime (and this because +evil spirits so often <i>breathe</i> upon men, or <i>inspire</i> them) by +breathing out of the mouth-hole of his mask a long night-breeze upon +the landlord. Meerbitzer could not explain to himself this most +suspicious blast, which blew real azote, and a deadly simoom-wind, upon +him; and all his warm constituent principles began to shoot into +icicles. But, unluckily, the dead man had soon shot all his breath +away, and was obliged to re-load his air-gun slowly. This suspension of +hostilities brought the lock-raper to himself, and to his legs again; +so that he made fresh preparations to take hold of the nightcap-tassel, +and remove that gossamer (said nightcap) from the field of hair. But +just as he was in the act of taking hold of it, he became aware that a +something was beginning to move under the bed; he paused, and waited +quietly (for it might be a rat) to see what this noise would turn out +to be caused by. But, as he thus waited, it was all of a sudden borne +in upon his mind that <i>a round thing</i> was rolling up his legs, and +coming higher and higher. In one instant he made a clutch at it with +his empty hand (the other held the scissors), and, powerlessly as a +pair of callipers, that hand rested on the ascending, slippery ball, +which kept pressing it up and up. Meerbitzer grew visibly stiff in the +legs, and his blood ran cold; but a fresh upward shove of his hand, and +a glance at the ascending head, administered to him (ere he was felled +to earth, wholly curdled to cheese), such a kick of terror that he flew +like a feather across the floor, and out of the door like a cannonball +shot straight at the bull’s eye by the cannon-powder of fear. He landed +in the room downstairs with the open scissors in his hand, his mouth +and eyes wide open, and a pallid spot on his face, compared to which +his hair-powder and his shirt were court-mourning. Nevertheless, in +this novel situation (I am glad to say it to his honour) he had the +presence of mind not to say a word about what had happened; partly +because ghost-stories cannot be related till nine days are over without +the greatest danger to the narrator, partly because he could not well +talk about his hair-shearing and privateering on <i>any</i> day at all. +</p> + +<p> +At one in the morning, Firmian told this tale to his friend with the +same fidelity as I have endeavoured to observe in recounting it to the +reader. This gave Leibgeber a useful hint to set a trusty body-guard +over the noble corpse; and to this office, in the absence of +chamberlains and other court officials, he could appoint no other than +Saufinder. +</p> + +<p> +On the last morning, which was to give our Siebenkæs “Notice to quit,” +arrived the <i>casa santa</i> of mankind, our <i>chambre garnie</i>, our last +<i>seed capsule</i>—the coffin for which we have to pay whatever is +demanded. “This is the last building grant of life,” said Henry, “the +carpenter’s final piece of cheatery.” +</p> + +<p> +At half an hour after midnight—when neither bat nor night-watchman, +nor beer-guest from the public-house, nor night-light was any longer to +be seen; and only a field-cricket here and there could be heard in the +sheaves, and a mouse or two in the houses—Leibgeber said to his sad +and anxious friend, “March, now! Since you shuffled off this mortal +coil, and entered into eternity, you have not known a moment of +happiness or peace. All the rest is my affair. Wait for me at Hof on +the Saale. We must see each other yet once more after death.” Firmian +fell in silence on his burning face, and wept. In this twilight hour he +once more revisited all the flowery places of the past, behind which he +was sinking as into a grave. His softened heart took delight in +depositing a parting tear upon every piece of dress belonging to his +sorrowing, bereaved Lenette—on every piece of her work—on every trace +of her housewifely hand. He pressed her betrothal wreath of roses and +forget-me-nots hard to his burning bosom, and placed Nathalie’s +rosebuds in his pocket. And thus—mute, oppressed, with stifled sobs, +and like one cast out by an earthquake from this earth on to the icy +coasts of a strange world—he crept down the steps after his friend; +pressed his helping hand once more at the door; and then night built +the funeral vault of her gigantic shadow all over him. Leibgeber wept +heartily as soon as he was lost to view. Tears fell on every stone +which he pocketed, and upon the old block which he took in his arms, to +imbed in the coffin-shell so as to give it the due weight of a corpse. +He filled up that haven of our bodies, and closed that ark of the +covenant, hanging the coffin-key, like a black cross, upon his breast. +And now for the first time he slept in peace in the house of mourning. +All was done. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning he made no secret of it, before the bearers and Lenette, +that he had placed the body in the coffin with his own two arms, and +not without considerable effort. She sighed to see her departed husband +once again, but Henry had thrown away the door-key of the painted house +in the darkness. He helped most diligently in the search for it (he had +it about him all the time), but it was in vain, and many of the +bystanders soon guessed that Henry was only deceiving, anxious to spare +the widow’s weeping eyes any further sight of the cause of her sorrow. +So they went forth, with the mock passenger in the quasi coffin, to the +churchyard which lay glistening in dew beneath the fresh blue sky. An +icy thrill crept to Henry’s heart as he read the words on the +gravestone. It had been lifted from off the flat, Moravian-like grave +of Siebenkæs’s great-grandfather, and turned over, and on the smooth +side glittered the newly-graven inscription— +</p> + +<p style="margin-left:20%; text-indent:10%">“<span class="sc">STAN: FIRMIAN SIEBENKÆS</span>, +Departed this life, 24th August, 1786.” +</p> + +<p> +This name had once been Henry’s own, and on the reverse side of the +monument was his present name, Leibgeber. Henry reflected that in a few +days <i>he</i> would fall (with his name cast away from him) as a little +brook into the world’s great ocean, and flow there without shores, and +be lost amongst strange and unknown billows. He felt as though he +himself with his old name, and his new, were going down to the grave. +So strangely mingled were his feelings that he seemed to himself as if +he were sticking fast in the frozen stream of life, while overhead a +burning sun was beating upon the ice-field, and he was lying between +the glow and the frost. In addition to this, the Schulrath just then +came running (with his handkerchief to his eyes and nose), and, in +stammering accents of sorrow, imparted the news which had just reached +the town—that the old King of Prussia had died on the 17th of the +month. +</p> + +<p> +The first thing that Leibgeber did was to look up to the morning sun, +as though Frederick’s eye was beaming morning fire from it over the +earth. It is easier to be a great king than a just one; it is easier to +be admired than justified. A king lays his little finger upon the long +arm of the monstrous lever, and, like Archimedes, lifts ships and +countries with the muscles of his fingers; but it is only the <i>machine</i> +that is great—and the machinist, Fate—not he who works it. The voice +of a king re-echoes like a peal of thunder amongst the numberless +valleys around him; and every gentle ray he emits is reflected in the +form of a burning beam condensed into a focus, from the countless +plane-mirrors which are upon his throne. But Frederick could, at most, +only be <i>lowered</i> by a throne, by having to <i>sit</i> upon it. His head +would only have been <i>greater</i> without the close-binding crown (its +crown of thorns) and magic circle. And happy, thou great spirit, +couldst thou still less become! For, although thou hadst broken +down within thee the Bastilles and the prison-walls of all ignoble +passions—although thou hadst given thy spirit what Franklin +gave to earth, namely, lightning-conductors, musical glasses, and +freedom—although no kingdom was to thee so lovely as that of truth, +and there was none which thou so lovedst to enlarge—although thou +didst permit the emasculate philosophy of French encyclopædists to hide +from thee eternity only, but not divinity, only the <i>belief</i> in virtue, +but not thine own—yet did thy loving bosom accept nothing from +friendship and humanity but the echoes of their sighs—the flute. And +thy spirit, which, with its great roots like the mahogany-tree, often +shivered the rocks it grew upon—thy spirit, in the fell battle of thy +wishes with thy doubts, in the contest of thy ideal world with the real +one, and the one in which thou didst believe, felt a painful discord +which no mild faith in a <i>second</i> softened to harmony. And therefore +there was upon thy throne no place of rest but that which thou hast now +attained. +</p> + +<p> +Some men bring all humanity before our eyes at a glance, as certain +events bring our whole lives. There fell upon Henry’s breast strong +splinters of the fallen mountain whose crash he heard. +</p> + +<p> +He placed himself before the open grave, and delivered this speech more +to invisible than to visible hearers:— +</p> + +<p> +“So, then, the epitaph on the tomb is <i>versio interlineario</i> of this +small, small printed life of ours. The heart does not rest until, like +the head, it is set in gold.<a name="div2Ref_93" href="#div2_93"><sup>[93]</sup></a> Thou hidden Infinite one! make, for +me, the grave a prompter’s tube, and tell me what I am to think of the +whole theatre. Indeed, what <i>is</i> there in the grave? Some ashes, a few +worms, coldness, and night—by Heaven! there is nothing better <i>above</i> +it either, except that one <i>feels</i> it. Mr. Schulrath, Time sits behind +us, and reads the calendar of life so cursorily, and turns over the +page of month after month at such a rate, that I can fancy this +grave—this moat here about our castles in the air—this fortress +trench—lengthening out and extending till it reaches my bed, and I am +shaken out of the bedclothes into this cooking-hole, like a heap of +Spanish flies. ‘Go on,’ I would say, ‘Go on. I shall come either to old +Fritz, or to his worms—and therewith <i>Basta</i>! ‘By Heaven! one is +ashamed of life when the greatest of men no longer possess it. And so +<i>holla</i>!” +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2> + +<p class="hang1">JOURNEY THROUGH FANTAISIE—RE-UNION ON THE BINDLOCHER MOUNTAIN—BERNECK—MAN-DOUBLING—GEFREES—EXCHANGE OF CLOTHES—MUNCHBERG—SOLO-WHISTLING—HOF—THE STONE OF GLADNESS AND DOUBLE-PARTING. +</p> + +<p> +Henry now plied more wings than any seraph, that he might fly up +with his friend as soon as possible. He packed up the latter’s +manuscripts in haste, and addressed them to Vaduz. The sealed will and +testament was lodged with the proper authorities, from whom, also, the +necessary certificate of death was obtained to show the Prussian +Widows’ Fund that it was not being defrauded. And then he got fairly +afloat, and pushed off, having first bestowed some weighty grounds +for consolation—as well as some weighty ducats—upon the downcast +straw-widow, who mourned in the striped calico-dress, as was right and +proper. +</p> + +<p> +Let us now overtake and accompany his departed friend, even before he +himself does so. During the first hour of his night-journey, vague and +disordered pictures of the past and of the future struggled in +Firmian’s heart; and it seemed to him as if, <i>for him</i>, there were no +such thing as a present, but that a wilderness stretched between the +past and the future. But the fresh, rich harvest month of August soon +gave him back the life he had (so to speak) played away; and when the +gleaming morning was come in earnest, the earth was lying all lighted +up with a new-fallen thunderstorm, now emitting lovely lightning only +from drops hanging on the corn-ears, as if over-silvered by the moon. +It was a new earth; he was a new creature, just burst, with ripened +pinions, through the egg-shell of the coffin. Oh! a broad, marshy, +overshadowed desert-waste, where a long, long troubled dream had kept +driving him to and fro, had vanished <i>with</i> that dream, and he was +awake, and gazing deep into Eden. The last week (and that last week +especially) had stretched out to enormous length those twisted +convolutions of suffering which give to our brief lives a false +appearance of being much too long (as we make the short walks of a +garden seem longer by laying them out in curves and sweeps). On the +other hand, his lightened breast, now free from all its old burdens, +was heaved by a great sigh, which was partly both sorrow and joy. He +had been too far into the Trophonius cave of the tomb—had looked death +too closely in the face—and it seemed to him that all our country +mansions, our pleasure-castles and vineyards, were built and laid out +upon the verge of the crater of the volcano of the grave-hillock, and +that the next night they would be shaken into dust. He felt alone, +upheaved, a dead man come back to life, but scarce alive; wherefore +every human face he met beamed upon him like that of a new-found +brother. “These are my brethren whom I left on earth,” said his heart; +and a fruit-bearing love, warm like the spring, expanded all its veins +and fibres; and it crept and grew round every <i>other</i> heart with +tender, clinging, ivy-like filaments. But the one he loved best was +still—too long—away; and he went on as slowly as he could, that so +Leibgeber (of whom he was in advance both in distance and time) might +overtake him before he got to Hof. A hundred times, on his journey, he +almost involuntarily looked round <i>for</i> this overtaking, as if it were +already a thing to be actually seen. +</p> + +<p> +At length he came to the Fantaisie of Bayreuth, on a morning when the +whole world gleamed and glittered from the drops of dew up to the +little silver cloudlets. But stillness was over all. The breezes were +asleep; nor had August, in air or in thicket, one single songster left. +It seemed to him as though, having left this mortal life, he was +wandering in a second, transfigured world, where the form of his +Nathalie might move by his side, with love in her eyes—and, in words +straight from the soul, no longer fettered by earthly bonds, say to +him, “<i>Here</i> you looked up in gratitude to the starry night; <i>here</i> I +gave you my wounded heart; here we spoke our earthly parting-vow; and +here I came, often, alone, and thought of the brief, bright vision.” +“And this is the spot,” he said to himself, when he came to the +château, “where she wept her last tears when she said farewell to her +lady-friend.” +</p> + +<p> +And now, again, it seemed that only <i>she</i> was the one transfigured. +(<i>He</i> seemed to his fancy to be the one left behind.) He <i>felt</i> that +he +should never see her more on earth; “but” (he said) “people must be +able to <i>love</i>, though they cannot meet or see each other.” All his +meagre future was to be illuminated by transfigured and glorified +dream-pictures only. But as the tree (according to Bonnet) is planted +as much in the air above it as it is in the earth beneath it, and +derives nourishment quite as much from the one as from the other, so it +is with every true human-creature. And thus Firmian lived in the +future with more vivid life than in the past—only with fewer of his +root-fibres in the visible ground. The whole tree, top-shoot, branches, +and all, stood under the open sky, drinking the free breeze of heaven +with its every blossom—where all he had to invigorate and cheer him +were two invisible friends—the one a woman, the other a man. +</p> + +<p> +At length the thin, beautiful vapour of his dreams thickened to a fog. +Nathalie’s sorrow for his death came hovering over him, and his +lonesomeness struck heavy on his heart, which longed unutterably for +some living being which should stand there and love him with all its +heart. But this being was still behind him, doing its best to overtake +him—Henry, to wit. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Leibgeber,” the voice of some one coming up after him suddenly +cried, “stop a moment, please. Here is your handkerchief; I picked it +up down below there.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked round, and there was the girl whom Nathalie had helped out of +the water, coming running up with a white handkerchief. But as he had +his own in his pocket, and the girl, gazing at him in astonishment, +said he had dropped it near the basin about an hour before (though he +had not then had so long a coat on)—a gush of gladness streamed into +his heart. Leibgeber had arrived, and had been down by the basin. +</p> + +<p> +He hastened to Bayreuth as fast as he could, all in a whirl, with the +handkerchief in his hand. It was moist, as if his friend’s weeping eyes +had rested on it. He pressed it warmly to his own, but it would not dry +them, for he thought how Henry passed his life in solitude, +exemplifying the truth of his own saying, “He who spares his feelings, +and puts armour upon them, keeps them most delicately sensitive—just +as the skin under the nails is the easiest hurt of all.” At the Sun +Hotel, Firmian learned from John the waiter that Leibgeber had actually +arrived, and was gone on about half-an-hour ago. Firmian ran off after +him, up and down the streets of Hof, blind and deaf, in such +tempestuous pursuit of his friend that he forgot all about the moist +handkerchief. +</p> + +<p> +After a long while, he caught sight of him climbing the long hill +behind the village of Bindloch, a mountain-road, in the true sense of +the words, not to be either ascended or descended at any great speed. +Leibgeber was straining up it as fast as he could, however, with the +view of unexpectedly overtaking Firmian before he got to Hof, perhaps +in Münchberg, or in Gefrees, if not in Berneck itself (which is at no +very great distance from Bayreuth). +</p> + +<p> +But was not everything destined to turn out ten times better? Did not +Siebenkæs, at the bottom of the hill, at last catch sight of him near +the level place on the summit, and call out his name—which he did not +hear? Did not Siebenkæs then run at an extraordinary pace after his +ascending friend (with the handkerchief in his hand), and did not the +latter chance to turn round, by accident, to have a glance at the sunny +landscape, and see all Bayreuth, and—at long and at last—his friend +hastening after him? And finally, did they not rush together, the one +down the hill, the other up (not like two hostile armies, however, but +like two wreathed and foaming goblets of joy and friendship)? +</p> + +<p> +Henry speedily perceived that in his friend’s breast there was much of +a powerful and dissolvent kind—belonging both to past and to future +times—at work, wherefore he sought to appease and calm all the “Naiads +of the rivers of tears.” +</p> + +<p> +“Everything went off divinely,” he said, “and everybody is well. Now you +are as free as I am. Your chains are off—the world is before you—so +in you plunge into it, fresh and merry, like me, and begin to live your +<i>real</i> life, for the first time <i>in</i> your life.” “You are right,” said +Firmian, “this is like meeting you again after death. Heaven is above +us, peaceful and quiet, gladsome, serene, and warm.” For that very +reason, he had not the courage to ask after those he had left behind, +particularly his widow. Leibgeber expressed great joy that he had +caught him up four post-stations on that side of Hof, and all the more +that, this being so, they could be together for a good long while +before they must part in Hof (which latter was the very point which he +was anxious to establish and emphasise). +</p> + +<p> +He now commenced a series of jokes on the subject of dying (with the +view of preventing anything in the shape of an <i>expression</i> of the +emotions which they both felt), and these jokes recurred like +milestones, or stone-benches, all along the turnpike-road to Hof; we +have no way of escaping them on the journey, unless we turn back. He +asked him if the diet had been sufficient which he had given him, as +the old Germans, Romans, and Egyptians did to their dead. He said that +Firmian must be excessively pious, inasmuch as he had risen from the +dead when he had barely shuffled off this mortal coil, confirming +Lavater’s doctrine that there are two resurrections, a first for the +good, and a later one for the bad. He said, further, that he could not +have had a better Archimimus<a name="div2Ref_94" href="#div2_94"><sup>[94]</sup></a> after his departure from this life +than himself. Leibgeber’s spirit and body <i>sprang</i> rather than walked. +“I am always in high spirits, and free, while I am in the open air. +Beneath the clouds, I have no clouds. When we are young, the raw north +wind of life whistles only on our backs, and, by Heaven! I am younger +than any reviewer.” +</p> + +<p> +They passed the night in Berneck, between the lofty bridge-piers of +mountains, through which once streamed those seas which have overspread +our globe with fields. Time and Nature—grand and almighty—were +reposing side by side on the confines of two kingdoms—between the +steep, lofty, memorial-pillars of creation—amongst firm mountains, +empty castles crumbling into ruin, rock-barriers and stone-tumuli lying +about the rounded green hills, like broken tables of the law of earth’s +first creation. +</p> + +<p> +When they arrived here, Henry said, “The clergy between this and Vaduz +must not find out that you have exchanged time for eternity, or they +will ask you for the surplice fees which every corpse has to pay in +each parish which it passes through. If we were in old Rome (and not in +Berneck),” said he, before the inn, “the landlord would never let you +into his house except down the chimney. And if we were in Athens, you +would be obliged to creep through a hoop-petticoat just as if you were +going into holy orders.”<a name="div2Ref_95" href="#div2_95"><sup>[95]</sup></a> On an occasion of this sort, he never +could cease from his witticisms, in which he differed (to his +disadvantage) from me; and he said that metaphors and similes were like +gold pieces, of which Rousseau says that the first is harder to get +than the next thousand. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore it was beyond his power not to be struck with an idea when, +in the evening, he saw Firmian paring his nails. “I can’t understand,” +he said “(now that I see it in your case), why Katherine Bieri—whose +nails had to be cut 250 years after she was dead—couldn’t have done it +just as well herself as <i>you</i> do after having given tip the ghost.” And +when he saw him turn over on his left side in bed, he simply observed +that he made his bed-quilt rise and fall in the same manner as St. John +the Evangelist does <i>his</i> earthen one—the grave—to the present +hour.<a name="div2Ref_96" href="#div2_96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +In the morning, it rained a little upon these flowers of humour. As +Leibgeber was laving that lion’s breast of his with cold water, Firmian +noticed that he pushed aside a little key, and asked what it opened. +“It <i>un</i>fastens nothing,” he said; “but it <i>fastened</i> the leaden +<i>cenotaphium</i>.”<a name="div2Ref_97" href="#div2_97"><sup>[97]</sup></a> Firmian was obliged to lean out of window with his +eyes, and dry them unobserved. Then (with his head still outside) he +said, “Give me the key. It is the wax-impression of a future one. I +want to make it the music-key of my inner music. I shall hang it up, +and look at it every day; and if ever my resolution to be better should +run down, I shall wind it up again with this watch-key.” He got it. +Then Leibgeber chanced to look into the mirror; and he cried, “I seem +almost to see myself double, not to say triple. <i>One</i> of me must be +dead, the one in there or the one out here. Which of us in this room is +it that is the real dead man appearing to the other? Or are we only +appearing to ourselves? Heh! you my three <i>me’s</i>, what say you to the +fourth?”—he asked, and turned to the two-reflected images, then to +Firmian—and said, “<i>Here I</i> am, too!” +</p> + +<p> +There was something in these sayings calculated to cause a shudder for +his future. Firmian, whose calmer reason made him dread a dangerous +growth of this metamorphic self-reflecting during the solitude of +Leibgeber’s wanderings, said, with tender anxiety, “My dear Henry, if +you are going to be always so much alone upon your eternal journeys, I +can’t help fearing it will do you harm. God himself is not alone. He +beholds His universe.” “I can always triple myself, in the profoundest +solitude, not excepting that of the universe itself,” answered +Leibgeber, strangely moved by the coffin-key—and he went to the +looking-glass, and pressed his eyeball sideways with his finger, so as +to see his reflection double; “but <i>you</i> can’t see the third person +there.” Then he went on in a merrier tone, with the view of cheering +Firmian (who was <i>not</i> much cheered by what he said, nevertheless), +leading him to the window. “But it is a far finer affair as regards +the street. I have a much larger company there. I put my finger to my +eye, and produce the twin of everybody, be he who he may; double the +landlord, as well as his chalk-score. Not a president on his way +to his meeting but ‘finds his fellow’ and meets his match. I provide +him with his Orang Utang, and the pair of them march past me, +<i>tête-à-tête</i>. Does a genius want an imitator? I take my finger—and +hey! presto!—a living facsimile of him on the spot. Every learned +collaborator has a collaborator collaborating with him. Associates +have associates associated with them. Only sons are made out in +duplicate, because, as you see, I carry my plastic nature, author, and +embossing-instrument—my finger to wit—always about with me. And I +seldom let a solo-dancer caper with fewer than four legs; he has to +hang in air as a <i>pair</i> of men. But it would amaze you to see how much +I can make out of a single fellow and his limbs by this sort of +grouping. Try to form some idea (by way of wind-up) of the crowds and +masses of people I have when I double such things as funerals and other +processions, with <i>doppelgänger</i>, and strengthen every regiment with an +entire regiment of flügelmen, repeating and imitating everything. For +(as we have been saying), like a grasshopper, I have my ovipositing +instrument—my finger—always with me. From all which, Firmian, you may +at all events draw the consolation that I enjoy more society than any +of you—<i>just as much again</i>, in fact. And, moreover, it consists +entirely of people who afford me endless amusement without trouble or +inconvenience, by aping their own gestures and proceedings.” +</p> + +<p> +Hereupon they looked each other in the face, full of joyful affection, +and wholly freed from any unpleasant traces of their recent wilder mode +of jesting. A third person would have been almost terrified at their +bodily resemblance in this hour, for each was a plaster-of-Paris cast +of the other; but their affection for each other made their faces seem +<i>un</i>like to themselves. Each saw in the other only that which he liked, +because it was not in himself; and it was with their features, as with +good deeds, which inspire us with, emotion and admiration in others, +but not in ourselves. +</p> + +<p> +When they were out in the air again, and on their way to Gefrees, and +the coffin-key, as well as their recent conversation, continually +brought to mind their parting (whose death sickle bent, closer around +them with every milestone on their road), Henry endeavoured to cast a +rosy beam or two into Firmian’s mist by putting into his hands an +accurate protocol of everything he had arranged and agreed upon with +the Count von Vaduz concerning his duties. “The Count,” he said, “would +of course think you had merely forgotten the conversation; but it is +better thus. Like a negro slave, you have killed yourself to obtain +your freedom and reach the <i>Gold Coast</i> of your silver coast; and it +<i>would</i> be damnable, indeed, if you were to be damned now after your +decease.” “I can never thank you enough, you dear friend,” said +Firmian; “but you should not make things harder for me than they are, +and draw yourself back like a hand from the clouds the moment you +have emptied yourself. <i>Why</i> is it that I am not to see you again +after we have said good-bye? Tell me.” “First,” he answered, “because +people—the Count, the Widow’s Fund, your widow—might find out that I +was extant in two editions, and that would be an accursed misfortune in +a world where a fellow can hardly be allowed to sit and sleep in peace +in his <i>first</i> original edition. Secondly, I intend to make my +appearance in several of the broad comedy characters which there are so +many of to be played on this ship of fools of an earth; and as long as +not a single devil among the audience knows me, I shall not be ashamed +of my parts. Ah! I could give you plenty more reasons into the bargain. +Besides, it delights <i>me</i> to come down with a flop, as if out of the +moon on to this earth; and in among mankind, unknown, uprooted, +untrammelled; a <i>lusus naturæ</i>, a <i>diabolus ex machina</i>, a monstrous +moon-<i>lithopædium</i>. Firmian, it is a settled thing. Perhaps in a few +years’ time I may send you a letter now and then, more particularly as +the Galatians<a name="div2Ref_98" href="#div2_98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> placed upon the funeral pyre letters directed to the +dead, as they might have put them in a post-office. Hut it really is a +settled thing now—positively.” “I should not give in to all this so +quietly,” said Siebenkæs, “if I did not feel convinced that I shall +very soon see you again. I am not like you. <i>I</i> look forward to <i>two</i> +meetings with you—one here below, one there above. And would to God +that I could bring you to die as you did me, and we met afterwards on a +Bindloch hill, but were going to be longer together.” +</p> + +<p> +If these wishes chance to remind the readers of Schoppe in Titan, they +may consider in what sense Fate often interprets and fulfils our +wishes. Leibgeber merely answered, “People must love, though they may +not be able to see each other; and, when all’s done, it is only Love +that we can love after all, and <i>that</i> we can each see in the other +every day.” +</p> + +<p> +In Gefrees, Leibgeber proposed that, as there was such ample leisure +(there being nothing to see in, or out of, the one street of the town), +they should exchange clothes, and that particularly in order that the +Count of Vaduz (who had not for years seen him in any other dress than +the one he now wore) should not find anything to be struck with about +Siebenkæs, but that everything about him should be exactly as it always +had been, even to the nails on the heels of his shoes. The thought of +being, in future, embraced (so to speak) by Henry’s sleeves, and +clasped and warmed by all his external <i>reliquia</i>, fell like a broad +ray of warm February sun on Siebenkæs’s breast. Leibgeber went into the +next room, and, to begin with, threw his short green jacket through the +half-open door, crying, “Come in, coat with skirts!” then followed up +with necktie and waistcoat, and long trousers with leather stripes, +saying, “Come in, breeches!” and ended up with his shirt, and the +words, “Here with the winding-sheet!” +</p> + +<p> +The shirt thus thrown in was, to Siebenkæs, as an astrologer (or +interpreter of signs), with respect to Leibgeber. He saw that he +had a higher motive in view in this bodily transmigration into clothes +than mere dressing for a certain character at Vaduz; to wit, the taking +up of his abode in the shell, or cocoon, which had contained his +friend. Not in a whole volume of Gellert’s or Klopstock’s ‘Letters +on Friendship,’ not in a whole week of Leibgeberian days of +self-sacrifice, did there seem anything so beloved and delicious as in +thus falling heir to his clothes. He would not profane this surmise +which made him so happy by alluding to it in words, but he was +confirmed in it when Leibgeber came out transformed into a Siebenkæs, +looked at himself in a satisfied manner in the mirror, and then laid +his three fingers, in silence, on Firmian’s forehead. This was his +highest token of love; wherefore, to my own and Firmian’s great joy, I +mention, that he repeated this sign more than three times during dinner +(the conversation running on wholly indifferent subjects). What +different and interminable jokes would he not have made upon this +moulting at another time, and under the influence of other feelings! +Merely to guess at a few. How much he would have made of the rebinding +of their two folio volumes, so as to involve Herr Lochmüller (the +landlord at Gefrees) in the deepest and most diverting embarrassment, +which that polite gentleman could by no means have extricated himself +from one minute before this, my fourth book, came to his aid, which at +this moment is only in Bayreuth, and not even gone to press! But +Leibgeber did nothing of all this; and even of witticisms he only +delivered himself of a few weak ones; about their being changelings, +about the sudden French transition of people <i>en longue robe</i> into +people <i>en robe courts</i>. And he said he would no longer call Siebenkæs +a transfigured being in boots, but one in shoes, which was more +befitting, as well as sounding somewhat more sublime. It was with +particular pleasure that he saw how his dog, Saufinder—between the old +bodies and the new clothes, as if between two fires of love—could not +properly make out the matter in the least degree, and often went from +one to the other with a most uneasy face. The <i>concordat</i> between the +two parties—the shortening of the one, and the lengthening of the +other—puzzled the creature, and he could make neither head nor tail of +it all. “I like him twice as much as I did,” said Leibgeber; “believe +me. If he is faithful to you, that is not being unfaithful to me.” He +could not possibly have said anything more complimentary than this. +</p> + +<p> +All the bleak way from Gefrees to Muenchberg, Firmian, from gratitude, +took the greatest pains to reflect back on Leibgeber that sunshine of +cheerfulness into which Henry was continually trying to lead him. It +was no easy matter, especially when he saw him striding after him in +the long coat. He concentrated himself to an extreme effort in +Muenchberg, the last post-station before Hof, where the corporeal arms +with which they clasped each other were, so to speak, to be cut off by +a long separation. +</p> + +<p> +As they were going along the road to Hof, more silent than before, +Leibgeber being first, and feeling refreshed by the pine-covered +mountain on his right, began (as he usually did on his journeys) to +whistle national airs, both merry and sad, for the most part in minor +keys. He said he thought there were many worse town-and-street-fifers, +and that he performed on the foot-passenger’s post-horn which Nature +had given him in a manner deserving of some applause. To Firmian, +however (now that their parting was so near), these tones, which seemed +to come echoing back from Henry’s long journeys of the past, and +forward from his coming lonely ones as well, were as a kind of Swiss +<i>Ranz des Vaches</i>, which went to his very heart; and it was well he was +walking last, for he could scarce restrain his tears. Ah! take music +away when the heart is full and must not overflow! +</p> + +<p> +At length he brought his voice sufficiently under command to be able to +say, without any apparent emotion, “Are you fond of whistling as you +go, and do you do it often?” In the tone of this question there was a +something as if the fluting was not quite so much of an enjoyment to +him as to the musician himself. “Always,” answered Leibgeber. “I +whistle<a name="div2Ref_99" href="#div2_99"><sup>[99]</sup></a> away life, and the world’s stage, and all there is upon +it—and all that sort of thing—a great many matters in the past; and, +like a steeple-warder at Carlsbad, I <i>whistle in</i> the future. Do you +dislike it? Is my fuguing incorrect, or my whistling a breach of the +rules of pure composition?” “Oh! only too beautiful,” answered +Siebenkæs. +</p> + +<p> +And then Leibgeber began again, but with tenfold power, and performed +such a lovely and melting mouth-organ voluntary, that Siebenkæs came up +to him with four long strides, and, putting his handkerchief to his +eyes with his left hand, while he laid his right gently on Henry’s +lips, he said in broken accents, “Henry, spare me! I don’t know why, +but every note of music moves me too deeply to-day.” The musician +looked at him—Leibgeber’s whole inner world was in his eyes—then +nodded in a decided manner, and strode rapidly onwards in silence, +without looking round or letting his face be seen. But his hands, +perhaps involuntarily, went on making little movements, beating time in +continuation of the melody. +</p> + +<p> +At length they arrived, oppressed and anxious, at the Grub-street +or Mint-city where I am now seated, pasting and colouring these +assignats—this paper-money for half the world—namely, Hof.<a name="div2Ref_100" href="#div2_100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> It is +by no means in my favour, indeed, that at that time I knew nothing +whatever of all these matters which half Europe is now being made +acquainted with through me. I was a good deal younger then—sitting +alone at home like a cabbage-lettuce, with the best will in the world +to close to a head—which process of closing, in men as well as in +lettuces, is hindered by nothing so much as by the contact of the +neighbouring salad-plants. It is easier, pleasanter, and more +advantageous, for a youngster to go from solitude into society (from +the seed-bed into the garden), than the converse—from the market-place +into the corner. Unmitigated solitude and unmitigated society are both +bad: and, with the exception of their <i>order</i> of succession, nothing is +so important <i>as</i> their succession. +</p> + +<p> +In Hof, Siebenkæs engaged two rooms at the inn, thinking Leibgeber +would not part from him till the morning. However, <i>he</i> (whom his own +pre-determination to say good-bye, and his dread of saying it, had +fretted and annoyed immensely for a considerable time) had taken a +mental vow that their two spirits should be torn asunder that day, and +that, immediately thereupon, he should be off into Saxony as hard as he +could, though it should want but a quarter of an hour to midnight; but, +at all events, before that particular day should come to a close. He +went into his room, smiling and pleasant, and thought of the airs he +had been whistling (which were still running in both their heads, if +not in their hearts). But he soon enticed him out of that empty +deaf-mute of a room into the diverting tumult and stir of the +coffee-room—not remaining long there, however, either—but as the +moon, in her first quarter, was standing like a lighted lamp just above +a post in the market-place, he asked him to go for a cruise round the +town with him. So they went, and climbed up the avenue, and looked down +at the gardens in the city-moat (which, perhaps, deserve to take the +<i>pas</i> over other artificial meadows, inasmuch as they are more +specially sown for cattle than others). I presume this was the reason +why Leibgeber (who had been in Switzerland) remarked late at night +(when the country, adorned and adopted by Nature, but disinherited by +Art, lay extended before him) that the people of Hof were like the +Swiss, whose whole country was a garden, except the few gardens in it. +</p> + +<p> +The pair went on drawing wider and wider parallels around the town. +They crossed a bridge, from which they saw a gallows-hill overgrown +with grass, which reminded them of that other ice-region, with its +crater, where, exactly a year ago, they had bidden each other good-bye +at night, but with the sweeter hope of an earlier meeting. Two friends +such as they are always struck with the same ideas in the same +circumstances. Each is—if not the unison—at all events the octave, +fifth, or fourth to the other. Henry tried to rekindle a little light +in his friend’s dark house of sorrow and mourning by aid of the +bird-pole, which stood like a commandant’s flag-staff, or a burning +stake, not far from the Supreme Criminal Court’s place of judicature. +He said, “A shooter-king has his Sinai, where he can both promulgate +his laws and vindicate them, close at his hand here, in a delightful +manner, beside his lever and leaping-pole, such as you heaved yourself +up by to the dignity of Great Negus and Grand Mogul of Kuhschnappel. +Button’s law—that every elevation has another of equal height and +similar composition opposite to it—applies to a great number of +eminences which correspond to one another; gallows-hills and thrones, +for instance, in this case; the two sides of the choir in churches; the +fifth story and Pindus: show-booths, and the Chairs of Professors +Extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +As Firmian did not speak, but remained sunk in sadder similes, Henry, +too, held his peace. He led him towards another stone (for he was +intimately acquainted with the whole country), one with a prettier +name, the “Stone of Joy.” At last, while they were toiling up the hill +towards this stone, Firmian took heart and said, “Tell me right out—I +am quite prepared—tell me at once, on your honour, when are you going +away from me for ever?” “Now,” answered Henry. On the pretence of its +being easier so to climb the hill-side, all flowers and perfumed +mountain-plants, they were holding each other by the hand, and as they +went they pressed hands sometimes, as if from accidents of mechanical +motion. But pain struck great roots that waxed amain into Firmian’s +heart, roots that split it asunder as the roots of trees split rocks. +Firmian laid himself down on the grey projecting rock, which divided +the green slope like a boundary-stone, and he drew his departing friend +down to his breast. “Sit down very close beside me this once more,” he +said. As the manner of friends is, each pointed out to the other +everything he saw. Henry showed him the camp of the town pitched all +about the foot of the hill, and looking as if fallen into a deep +sleep, nothing moving in it but some flickering lights. The river went +coiling along beneath the moon round the town like a great serpent with +a sparkling back, then stretched itself out through two bridges. The +half-shimmer of the moon, and the white transparent vapour of the +night, lifted the hills, the woods, and the earth, up to the heavens; +and the water on the earth was spangled with stars like the blue night +above, and the Earth, like Uranus, had a doubled moon, as it wore a +child in either hand. +</p> + +<p> +“In reality,” Leibgeber began, “we can both always see each other +whenever we please. All we have to do is to look into a looking-glass. +That is <i>our</i> moon-mirror.”<a name="div2Ref_101" href="#div2_101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> “No,” said Firmian, “we will fix on a +time when we will think of each other—on our birthdays—and on the day +of my pantomime death, and on <i>this</i>.” “Very well,” said Leibgeber, +“these shall be our four quarter-days.” +</p> + +<p> +Of a sudden, the hand of the latter rested upon a dead lark, which had +probably been shot. He clasped Firmian’s shoulders, and, raising him +from the ground, said, “Stand up; we are men. What is all this fuss +about? Fare you well! If ever I let you out of my head, or out of my +heart, may God dash me to atoms with a thousand thunderbolts. You are +and shall be for ever in my bosom as warmly as my own living heart. And +so, good-bye, and all good attend you; and in all the Berghem Seapiece +of your life may there not be a single wave the size of a tear. +Farewell!” They clung together, and wept heartily, and Firmian did not +answer as yet. His fingers stroked and pressed his Henry’s hair. At +last he leaned his cheek against the beloved eyes; before his <i>own</i> +eyes the wide abyss of night shimmered, and his lips uttered (but with +no cadence in the tone), “‘Fare you well,’ do you say to me? Ah! <i>that</i> +I <i>cannot</i>, when I have lost my truest, my oldest friend. The earth +will always be as dark to me as it is now around us here. It will be +hard for me when I am dying, and, in my feverish fancy, think I am only +<i>pretending</i> to die again, and stretch out my hand in the darkness to +feel for you, and say, ‘Henry, close my eyes again, I cannot die +without you!’” Henry whispered, “Tell me what else to say to you, and +then may God punish me if I utter another syllable.” Firmian stammered, +“Will you always like me, and shall I see you soon again?” “Not soon; +not for a long time,” he answered, “and I shall never cease to love +you.” As he was starting to go, Firmian held him back. “We will look at +each other once more,” he said. And they bent back, their faces +channelled by streams of emotion, and looked at each other for the last +time, while the night-wind, like the arm of a stream, mingled with the +deep river, and then rushed on united with it in deeper billows, while +the great mountain-range of creation trembled before the tearful eyes. +But Henry tore himself away, made a sign with his hand as if to say all +was over, and took his flight down the hill. +</p> + +<p> +After a little, Firmian was impelled after him—not knowing why—by the +goad of pain and sorrow. His inner man, compressed by the tourniquet +into insensibility, did not feel the amputation of his limb just then. +They both hurried along the same road, though separated by hills and +valleys. Whenever Henry stopped and looked back, so did Firmian. Alas! +after a sultry storm, such as this, the waves all freeze to spikes of +ice, and the heart lies upon them transfixed. As Firmian went on +broken-hearted, by unknown, darkling paths, it seemed to him as if all +the death-bells on earth were tolling behind him, as if the stream of +life were running dry before him fast; and when he saw the blue of the +sky cut across by a black storm-tree<a name="div2Ref_102" href="#div2_102"><sup>[102]</sup></a> which lay upon the stars like +the bier of the future, a voice seemed to cry, “With this foot-rule of +vapour, Fate is measuring you, your world, and your love, for your last +coffin.” +</p> + +<p> +From the circumstance that the distance between him and the other +figure kept always the same, Henry at last became aware that it was +following him, and halted only when he halted. So he made up his mind +that he would lie in wait in the next village for the coming up of this +form which was creeping after him. In the next village then, Töpen +(which lies deep in a valley), he awaited, in the broad shadow of a +gleaming church, the arrival of this unknown being which was on his +track. Firmian came hastening along the broad white street, dazed with +sorrow—blind in the moonlight—and stopped, as if frozen, close by +Henry from whom he had so recently been severed. There they stood +facing each other, like two spirits above their corpses, each taking +the other for a ghost (just as the superstitious think the noises made +by the buried-alive are caused by spirits). Firmian trembled lest +Leibgeber should be vexed with him, and opened his arms and stammered +out, “It is I, Henry,” and went to him. Henry gave a cry of pain, and +threw himself upon the faithful breast; but his vow sealed his lips. +And thus these two miserable, or blessed beings, speechless, blind and +weeping, pressed their beating hearts close together once more. And +when this moment—wordless, full of torture, full of bliss—was over +and past, an iron, cold one, tore them asunder, and Fate seized them +with two almighty arms, and hurled the one bleeding heart to the south, +and the other to the north; while the dejected, bleeding corpses passed +slowly and alone, along the widening path of parting, in the night. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +And why is it that <i>my</i> own heart breaks in twain with such a pang? Why +should it be that, long ere I came to their parting, I could not keep +my own tears back? Ah! my dear Christian, is it not because in this +church those who once lay upon your heart and mine are mouldering into +dust? No, no, I am used to it now; in the black magic of our lives to +see skeletons suddenly start up in our friends’ places; that of every +two who put their arms about each other <i>one</i> has to die;<a name="div2Ref_103" href="#div2_103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> that an +unknown breath blows the brittle glass which we call a human breast, +and a cry, which we know not of, shatters it in a moment. It does not +pain me now so much as of old, ye two brothers sleeping in the church, +that the hard, cold hand of death struck you away so soon from the +honey-dew of life, and that ye stretched your wings and have vanished +away. Oh! either your sleep is sounder than ours, or your dreams are +happier, or your awaking is blither. But what agonises us in every +grave-hillock is this thought. “Alas! beloved heart, <i>how</i> I would have +loved you had I known you were going to die!” +</p> + +<p> +But, since none of us can take a corpse’s hand and say, “Pale one! at +all events I have sweetened thy transitory life a <i>little</i>; I have, at +any rate, never given that faded heart of thine anything but love and +happiness;” and as when time, sorrow, and the loveless winter of life +have beautified our hearts, at length we must all go up, with +unavailing sighs, to the overthrown forms which are lying beneath the +landslip of the grave, and say to them, “Oh! that, now that I am better +and gentler, I have thee with me no longer, and can no longer love +thee! Oh! that the beloved breast is transparent and broken in, and no +heart in it which I would love more fondly, and gladden as I never did +before.” What have we left but an unavailing sorrow, a dumb repentance, +and never-ending bitter tears? +</p> + +<p> +Yes, my Christian, we have something better left still—a warmer, +truer, lovelier, love for every soul which we have not yet lost. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> + +<p class="center">DAYS IN VADUZ—NATHALIE’S LETTER—A NEW YEAR’S WISH—WILDERNESS OF +DESTINY AND THE HEART. +</p> + +<p> +We next meet our Firmian (promoted to higher rank on his retirement +from the world, as officers are on theirs from the service, to that of +Inspector, namely) in the Inspector’s quarters at Vaduz. He found he +had to twist his way through so many thickets of prickly-pear and +impenetrable thorn-hedges, that, amid his labours, he almost forgot +that he was alone—so utterly alone—in the world. No one could endure +and overcome solitude, if it were not for the hope of companionship in +the future, or for the belief in invisible companionship in the +present. +</p> + +<p> +With the Count he had only to seem to be what he really was, and then +he was most like the unconventional Leibgeber. He found the Count to be +an old man of the world, living alone, with neither wife, sons, nor +female servants—a man who filled up and adorned his grey years with +the arts and sciences, the last, and most lasting, enjoyments of a life +enjoyed to the end—and who cared for nothing on earth (saving always +the amusement of jesting upon it) except his daughter, who (as we are +aware) had been Nathalie’s greatest friend in the starry and flowery +days of youth. +</p> + +<p> +As he had devoted all his powers of body and soul, in early life, to +climbing to the tops of all the slipperiest <i>mats de cocagne</i> of +pleasure, and carrying off the prizes from them, he had come down to +earth with both sides of his being a little wearied. His mental life +was now a kind of nursing, and lying in a tepid bath, which it required +a shower of cold water to make him raise himself from, and into which +fresh warm water had to be constantly being poured. The point of honour +of keeping his word, and the greatest possible happiness for his +daughter, were the only unbroken reins by which moral laws had ever +restrained him; for he looked upon all their other covenants more in +the light of flower-chains, or strings of pearls—matters which a man +of the world breaks and mends often enough in his career. +</p> + +<p> +As it is easier to imitate lameness than straight walking, it was not +difficult for Siebenkæs to enact the part of his beloved <i>Diable +Boiteux</i>. The Count was somewhat struck with his white-painted face +(which was natural to him), and with his melancholy, and a heap of +nameless divergences (variations and aberrations) from Leibgeber. But +the Inspector accounted for these to his patron by saying that he was +so changed that he scarce recognised himself—that he seemed to have +become the changeling of his former self since his illness, and since +he had seen his college friend Siebenkæs depart this life in +Kuhschnappel. In brief, the Count could not but believe what he was +told; who would think of such an absurd story as the one I am telling +here? And if the reader had been present in the room himself, I am sure +he would have believed the Inspector in preference to me, if it were +for no other reason than that he remembered more of his old +conversations with the Count than the latter did himself. (’Tis true he +got this knowledge out of Leibgeber’s diary.) +</p> + +<p> +At the same time, as he had to speak, and act, in the capacity of +chargé-d’affaires, or resident consul, and proxy of his beloved +Leibgeber, there were two things which he was, in a high degree, +constrained to be—cheerful and kindly. Leibgeber’s humour had a +greater power of colour, a greater freedom of drawing, and a more +poetic and citizen-of-the-world-ish, and ideal compass and range, than +Firmian’s own<a name="div2Ref_104" href="#div2_104"><sup>[104]</sup></a> and this assumed brightness of temper by and by +became genuine. Moreover, his delicacy of feeling, and his friendship, +kept constantly before his mental vision, as on a Moses-cloudy-pillar +on his path of life, a shining, magnified image of Henry with a glory, +and a crown of laurel on his brow and every thought within him cried, +“Be glorious, be godlike, be a Socrates, to do honour to the spirit +whose ambassador you are.” And which of us could assume the name of a +beloved person, and go and act unworthily? +</p> + +<p> +Nothing on earth is so often deceived—not even women or princes—as +the conscience. Our Inspector tried to make <i>his</i> believe that his +name had really <i>been</i> Leibgeber in early days—just as he signed it +now—and that he really <i>was</i> helping the Count in his work. Moreover, +who could be more ready than he to make a perfectly clean breast of the +whole story to the Count as soon as ever the proper time came? It was +easy to see that a humourous, juristic forgery, and pictorial illusion +of this sort would please him better than any amount of truths founded +upon reason, or <i>responsa prudentum</i>—to say nothing of his +gratification at finding he could have his friend, humorist, and +jurist, with two heads, two hearts, four legs and arms—in duplicate, +in short. Besides, the fact must not be lost sight of that the lies he +told were more <i>unavoidable</i> lies than lies for the amusement of the +thing—inasmuch as he touched as seldom as he could upon Leibgeber’s +previous conversations and relations, and as much as possible on his +own, which involved no breaches of truth. +</p> + +<p> +Thus it is with—not our Inspector only—but man in general. He has an +indescribable fondness for <i>halves</i>, perhaps because he is a colossus +and demi-god standing, with out-stretched legs, upon two worlds. He +particularly delights in half-romances, half-postage of selfishness, +half-proofs, half-scholars (smatterers in knowledge), half-holidays, +half-spheres—and (consequently) better halves. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs’s new labours of various kinds concealed his own pains and +sufferings from him for the first few weeks (at all events, when the +sun was not shining). But what gave him his largest extra-ration of +pleasure was the Count’s satisfaction with his legal knowledge, and +careful and accurate style of doing his work. Once, when the Count said +to him, “Friend Leibgeber, you are keeping your promise like a man. +Your ability and accuracy over your work are deserving of all praise, +and I do not conceal from you that I felt just the slightest shade of a +misgiving on this very head, notwithstanding my high opinion of your +other talents. For, like your Frederick II., I consider talk and work +to be two wholly distinct things; and as regards the latter, I look for +the most accurate and methodical attention to all its details in every +one I have to deal with.” Firmian rejoiced within himself, as he +thought, “At all events I have turned aside some little matter of blame +from my dear Henry, and gained a little modicum of praise for him; +though he could have done it all much better himself, if he had +chosen.” +</p> + +<p> +After a pleasure of self-sacrifice such as this, one always wants to go +on enjoying <i>fresh</i> pleasures of self-sacrifice, and making new +sacrifices, just as children, who, whenever they are given anything, +cannot cease giving. He brought out his ‘Selections from the Devil’s +Papers,’ gave them to the Count, and told him plainly and openly that +they were his own work. “This is not a deception in the slightest,” he +thought; “though he supposes they are by Leibgeber; I have no other +name now.” The Count never wearied of reading and praising these +papers, and what particularly pleased him was, that, in the path of +satire, he followed the guidance of his own two compatriots, the +British Castor and Pollux of humour, Swift and Sterne. Siebenkæs +listened to the encomiums on his book with such delight that he seemed +exactly like a conceited author—whereas, in reality, he <i>was</i> nothing +but a <i>lover</i> of his Henry, who had managed to conjure a few extra +laurel-crowns on to his image in the Count’s mind. +</p> + +<p> +This single enjoyment of his was, of a truth, necessary to him by way +of consolation and cordial for a life which was flowing on, beshaded +and chilled between two steep banks of legal business, week after week, +month after month. Alas! with the exception of the good Count’s talk +(whose extraordinary kindness to him would have made his heart beat +even more warmly than it did, could he have thanked him for it in +another’s name as well as his own),—he heard nothing better than an +occasional murmur of the waves of his life. He found himself, every +day, in his old, disagreeable post of a critic, compelled to read +what he had to give judgment upon. Formerly it had been books—now it +was lawyers. He saw into so many empty heads, into so many empty +hearts—saw such darkness in the former, such blackness in the +latter. He saw how very much the common-herd (when it comes to the +Egeria-fountain of the juristic ink-bottle to benefit its <i>calculi</i>), +is like Carlsbad bath-guests, in whose case the hot-springs bring all +diseased matter to the surface of the skin. He saw that most of the +oldest, and worst, members of the legal profession are, in only one +beautiful respect, like poisonous plants—namely, that they are not +half so poisonous, but more innocuous, while they are young. He saw +that a just judgment often did as much harm as an unjust one, and +that the one was appealed against just as much as the other. He saw +that it was easier, and, at the same time, more distasteful, to be a +judge than an advocate; although neither of them loses anything by an +injustice—for a judge is paid for a judgment reversed on appeal, just +as an advocate is for a case which he loses. He saw that, in dealing +with defendants, the principle of grooms is applied (who look upon the +currycomb as a good half of the forage). And, finally, he saw that +nobody fares worse in the affair than he who <i>sees</i> it, and that the +devil is the very last of all things that the devil <i>takes</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Amid labours and views such as these, the tender fibres of the heart +contract, and the open arms of the inner man are paralysed—the +overweighted soul scarce has the <i>strength</i> to love, let alone the +<i>time</i>. When we love, and seek after <i>things</i>, it must be at the +expense of <i>persons</i>. If we <i>work</i> too much, we must <i>love</i> too +little. There was but one place where poor Firmian gave vent, once +in the twenty-four hours, to the longings and prayers of his tender +soul—namely, his pillow; and its cover was the white handkerchief +waiting for his weeping eyes. A deluge (made of tears) was over all his +former world—nothing floating on its surface but the two withered +funeral-garlands of departed days—the flowers which Lenette and +Nathalie had worn on their breasts, like petrified medicine-flowers of +his sick soul. +</p> + +<p> +Living so far away, and so wholly outside the elliptical vault, he +could hear as little of Kuhschnappel as of Schraplau—of Lenette and +Nathalie not a word. He merely learned, from the ‘Messenger of the Gods +and Advertiser of German Programmes,’ that he was dead, and that the +critical profession was thereby deprived of one of its ablest and most +zealous members. Thus our Inspector was honoured by the necrologium +sooner than any other German scholar ever was—as soon, in fact, as the +Olympic conqueror Euthymus,<a name="div2Ref_105" href="#div2_105"><sup>[105]</sup></a> to whom, by a decree of the Delphic +Oracle, sacrifice and divine worship was adjudged during his lifetime. +I do not know which kind of ears—long ears or deaf—the German trump +of fame prefers to blow to. +</p> + +<p> +And yet, in the depths of this ice-month of his love-imploring heart, +and in the wilderness of his loneliness, Firmian still had one living, +resplendent flower—and that was Nathalie’s parting-kiss. Ah! ye who +waste and pine because of our insatiableness, did ye but know how a +kiss, which is a first and a last, blossoms and blooms throughout a +life—imperishable double-rose of speechless lips and burning souls—ye +would search for bliss more enduring—aye, and find it too! That kiss +sealed, in Firmian, and confirmed the spirit-bond immortalising and +eternising love at its loveliest and brightest hour of bloom. The +speechless lips were still eloquent, to <i>him</i>. The spirit breathed +between them as of old; and often as he saw, by night, behind the veil +of his closed, tearful eyelids, Nathalie going away from him, with all +her sacred sorrows, and vanishing down the darkling path—he never had +enough of the parting, the anguish, and the love. +</p> + +<p> +At last, when six months had passed, one beautiful winter morning, when +the white hills with their snow-crystal woods lay bathed in the +rose-blood of the sun, and Aurora was stretching her pinions more +widely as she gently laid them down upon the glittering earth—there +flew a letter into Firmian’s empty hand, as if borne upon the +morning-breeze of a spring as yet among the things to be. It was from +Nathalie, who, like the rest of the world, supposed him to be the Henry +of former days. +</p> + +<p> +“<span class="sc">Dear Leibgeber</span>,—I can restrain or control my heart no longer. Every +day it longs to break in pieces before yours, and show you all its +wounds. You were <i>once</i> my friend, I know; am I quite forgotten? Have I +lost <i>you</i> too? Ah! surely not; it is only that you cannot speak to me +for sorrow, since your Firmian died upon your breast, and still rests, +vanishing into the frost of death, upon the aching spot. Ah! why did +you persuade me to accept the fruit that grows upon his grave—and, as +it were, open that grave anew every year?<a name="div2Ref_106" href="#div2_106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> The first day I received +this fruit was bitter—bitterer than any other. You will see from a +little New Year’s Greeting, which I addressed to myself (and which I +enclose), how I sometimes feel. One passage in it refers to a white +rose in my room, from which I managed to gather a flower or two in +December. My friend, now grant me a request, the making of which is +really my object in writing this letter—my most earnest prayer for +sorrow, a bitterer sorrow than is mine even now—for this will give me +consolation. Tell me—for there is no one else who can—and I know no +other—tell me everything about our dear one’s last hours and moments; +what he said and what he suffered; how his eyes closed, and how his +life ended? All this, everything, though it will pierce my heart, I +<i>must</i> be told. What can it cost you and me but tears?—and tears +soothe suffering eyes. +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:55%">“I remain, your friend, +</p> + +<p class="right">“NATHALIE A. +</p> + +<p> +“P.S. If there were not so many causes to prevent me, I would go myself +to his resting-place and gather relics for my soul; but, if <i>you</i> keep +silence, I do not answer for anything. I send you my congratulations on +your new appointment, and I hope I may be able to wish you joy some day +by word of mouth; my heart may become so far whole once more that I +shall be able to come and pay my dear friend a visit at her father’s, +and see <i>you</i> without dying of sorrow, at the likeness you bear to your +buried friend, <i>un</i>like you now.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I venture to translate<a name="div2Ref_107" href="#div2_107"><sup>[107]</sup></a> the pretty poem as follows: +</p> + +<h3>“MY NEW YEAR’S GREETING TO MYSELF.</h3> + +<p> +“The New Year’s gates are open, and Fate, standing between the sun and +the burning morning clouds upon the mound of ashes of the year which +has fallen to dust, deals out the days according to their lot. What +dost thou pray for, Nathalie? +</p> + +<p> +“Not for joy. Alas! all the joys which have been in my heart have left +but black thorns there; their rose-juice soon, was gone. The heavy +thunder-cloud grows as the sun-gleam brightens—and what shines upon us +is the ray reflected from the sword which the coming day will hold to +our happy hearts. No, no; I pray not for joys; they make the thirsting +heart so void. It is but sorrow that can fill it full. +</p> + +<p> +“Fate deals the days according to their lot. What dost thou long for, +Nathalie? +</p> + +<p> +“Not love. Oh! those who press the thorny white rose of love to their +hearts draw blood from out them; the warm tears of bliss which fall +into the blossom soon grow chill, and are dried up amain. Love, all +gleam and bloom, hangs on the morning sky of life, like some great +rose-red Aurora in the heavens. Ah! do not enter that bright glittering +cloud—it is but mist and tears. No, no; long not for love; die +of a lovelier sorrow. Sink into the chill of death under a nobler +poison-tree than is the lovely myrtle. +</p> + +<p> +“Thou art kneeling at the feet of Destiny, Nathalie; tell him thy +desire! +</p> + +<p> +“Neither do I desire more friends. No; we stand all, side by side, on +undermined graves—and when we have <i>so</i> long held each other so fondly +by the hand, and <i>so</i> long suffered together, our friend’s empty mound +breaks in, and he turns pale, and sinks—and I am left alone, my life +all frozen, beside the filled-up grave. No, no: but when at last there +comes the hour when the heart will die no more, but has put on immortal +being—and when friends stand side by side in the eternal world—then +let the firmer breast beat warm and high, then let the eye, which is to +beam for ever, weep blissful tears, then let the lips, which never more +grow pale, murmur in rapture, ‘<i>Now</i> come to me, beloved soul, we will +love <i>now</i>, for we shall never have to part, again.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! thou bereaved and widowed Nathalie! what would’st thou have on +earth? +</p> + +<p> +“A grave, and patience; nothing else beside. But these deny me not, +thou silence-keeping Fate! Dry thou mine eyes, then close them! Still +my heart, then break it!—Yes, <i>one</i> day, when the free spirit spreads +her wings in a fairer heaven, and when the New Year breaks upon a purer +world—when we <i>all</i> meet, and love, again—<i>then</i> shall I lay my +longings, prayers, and wishes at thy feet. But none for <i>me</i>; for <i>I</i> +shall be too blest.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In what words could I depict the <i>inward</i> speechlessness and +motionlessness of her friend, when he had read the paper, and still +held and gazed at it, although he could no longer either see or think. +Oh! the ice-floes of the glacier of death spread wider and wider, and +filled up one warm Tempè valley after another. The only bond by +which our solitary Firmian now held to humanity was the cord of his +death-bell and coffin—his bed was but a broader bier—and every joy +seemed a theft from the withered, leaf-stripped heart of another. And +thus the stem of his life, like that of many flowers,<a name="div2Ref_108" href="#div2_108"><sup>[108]</sup></a> went deeper +and deeper down, its top becoming its hidden root. +</p> + +<p> +The abyss of a difficulty yawned on every side, and to do <i>anything</i> +was just as perilous as to do <i>nothing</i>. I shall lay the difficulties, +or resolutions, in their order as they struck his mind, before the +reader. In man, the devil flies up always sooner than the angel,—the +evil intention comes before the good one.<a name="div2Ref_109" href="#div2_109"><sup>[109]</sup> </a><i>His</i> first was +non-moral, namely, that he should answer Nathalie, and tell her what +she wished to hear—that is, should <i>lie</i> to her. We find the black +mourning coat as becoming, when others wear it for <i>us</i>, as warm when +<i>we</i> wear it for <i>others</i>. “But I shall melt her heart” (said <i>his</i>) +“into fresh anguish with a continuation of wound and lie; ah! not +<i>even</i> my actual death would be worth such pain and sorrow. Therefore I +shall keep utter silence.” But <i>then</i>, she must think Henry annoyed, +and that she has lost <i>this</i> friend too; nay, she might, in this case, +travel to Kuhschnappel, and go to his grave, and bear it as an +additional burden upon her oppressed and trembling soul. In both these +cases there was the risk of the <i>third</i> danger—that she should come to +Vaduz, and that he should then have to convert the written lies, which +he had spared her, into spoken ones. There was but one way of escape +that he could see—the most virtuous, but the steepest—he could tell +her the truth. But with what danger to every relation of his life this +confession was fraught, even if Nathalie kept counsel—also, a yellow, +cross light would fall upon Henry in Nathalie’s eyes, especially as she +had no means of knowing anything as to the nobleness and generosity of +his aims and deceptions. On the whole, there was least for his heart to +suffer on the precarious path of truth, and ultimately he resolved to +go by it. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> + +<p class="center">NEWS FROM KUHSCHNAPPEL—WOMAN’S ANTICLIMAX—OPENING OF THE SEVENTH +SEAL. +</p> + +<p> +It is a matter which often quite puts me beyond myself that, although +we <i>do</i>, in the end, duly accept and honour the bills which Virtue +draws upon us, we only <i>pay</i> them after such a vast number of days of +grace and double-usances—although neither the devil nor Constantinople +will hear of either the one or the other. Firmian urged no further +pleas of objection, except for delay. He merely <i>postponed</i> his +confession, thinking that as Apollo is the best consoler (Paraclete) of +man, and as Nathalie had shown the basilisk of sorrow its own image in +the mirror of poetry, the sight of <i>itself</i> would be sufficient to kill +it, Thus it is that all virtuous motions in us are weakened by the +friction of time and of our inclinations. +</p> + +<p> +One single letter, however, sent all the scenery of his theatre into +confusion again. It came from Schulrath Stiefel:— +</p> + +<p> +“<span class="sc">Honoured Sir</span>,—You doubtless remember more than too well the +testamentary instruction which our mutual friend, the late lamented +Poor’s Advocate, Siebenkæs, left behind him, to the effect that Herr +von Blaise should make payment of the trust-funds in his hands—and, +indeed (as you are aware), to your respected self in order that you, +might remit it to the widow—which failing, it was the testator’s +avowed intention to appear as a ghost. Be this as it may, thus much is +matter of notoriety in this town and neighbourhood, that, for some +weeks past, a ghost, in the likeness of our lamented friend, has +pursued the Herr Heimlicher everywhere, who has, in consequence, become +so ill and bedridden, that he has taken the Holy Sacrament, and made up +his mind to pay over the above-mentioned moneys in good earnest. I now +beg to inquire of you whether you would wish to receive them in the +first instance, or whether (as would be almost more natural) they shall +be paid at once to the widow. I have yet to mention that—in accordance +with the desire of the testator—I sometime since married the former +Mrs. Siebenkæs, and that I expect very soon to be the happiest of +fathers. She is a most admirable wife and housekeeper. She is by no +means a Thalæa,<a name="div2Ref_110" href="#div2_110"><sup>[110]</sup></a> and would lay down her life for her husband as +gladly as he would lay down his for her; and I often have nothing left +to desire, but that my predecessor, her good, never-to-be-forgotten +first husband Siebenkæs (who <i>had</i> his little whims and eccentricities +at times), could be a spectator of the happiness in which his beloved +Lenette is now bathed. She weeps for him every Sunday as she goes +through the churchyard, but at the same time she confesses that she is +happier now than in former times. It grieves me much that it is only +now that I have learnt, from my wife, in what miserable circumstances +the dear departed found himself, as regarded his purse. How eagerly, +had I been aware of this, I should have taken him and his wife by the +arms, and assisted them as becomes a Christian! If the deceased, who +<i>now</i> possesses more than any, or all, of us, can, in his glory, look +down upon us, I am sure he will forgive me. I would respectfully beg +for an early reply to this letter. One cause of the restitution of the +trust-funds may also be, that the Heimlicher (who is an honest enough +man upon the whole) is now no longer influenced by Herr von Meyern. +They have completely fallen out, as all the town knows, and the latter +has broken off engagements with five ladies in Bayreuth, and is about +to enter into the state of holy matrimony with a native of +Kuhschnappel. +</p> + +<p> +“My wife is as bitter against him as Christian love permits, and says +that when she meets him she feels like a hunter who encounters an old +woman in his path of a morning; for he was the cause of much needless +vexation between her and her husband, and she often tells me with +pleasure how cleverly you, esteemed Mr. Inspector, often set this +dangerous fellow down, and kept him in his place. However, he does not +dare to set foot in <i>my</i> house. I defer, for the present, a more +detailed request—as to whether you would not feel inclined to fill our +departed friend’s vacant place as Collaborateur in the ‘GOD’S Messenger +of German Programmes,’ which (I may say without undue boasting) is +taken in, and looked upon with approval in Gymnasia and Lycæa, from +Swabia as far as Nürnberg, Bayreuth, and Hof. There is rather a +superfluity than a lack of miserable Programme-scribblers; and (let me +say it without flattery) <i>you</i> are the very man to wield the satiric +scourge over the heads of these frog-spawn in the Castalian springs, as +few others <i>could</i>. But of this more on another occasion. My wife +desires to add <i>her</i> most cordial remembrances to her departed +husband’s highly-esteemed friend; and, hoping for a speedy answer, +</p> + +<p style="text-indent:10%">“I remain, your most obedient humble servant, +</p> + +<p class="right">“<span class="sc">S. R. Stiefel</span>, Schulrath.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The human heart is shielded by <i>great</i> sorrows from the impact of +<i>small</i> ones—by the waterfall from the rain.<a name="div2Ref_111" href="#div2_111"><sup>[111]</sup></a> Firmian forgot +everything in remembering, suffering, and crying out to himself, “Thus +I have lost thee for ever, wholly. Oh! <i>thou</i> wert good always, it was +<i>I</i> who was not. Be happier than thy solitary friend whom thou mournest +justly every Sunday.” He now cast all the blame of his bygone +matrimonial lawsuits upon his own satirical whimsies, and ascribed the +failure of his crop of happiness to his own ungenial climate. +</p> + +<p> +But in this he was doing himself greater injustice than he had formerly +done Lenette. I mean to make the world a present of my thoughts on this +subject, on the spot. Love is the Perihelion of the fair sex; nay, it +is the transit of every one of those Venuses over the sun of the ideal +world. At the epoch of this “higher style” of their souls, they love +<i>everything</i> that <i>we</i> love, even the sciences, and the whole <i>best</i> +world within the breast—and they despise what <i>we</i> despise, even +clothes and news. In this spring of theirs these nightingales go on +singing until the summer solstice; the wedding-day is their longest +day. Then the devil runs away with—not exactly everything, but +something every day. The bast-band of wedlock binds the poetic wings, +and the bridal-bed is (for the imagination, the phantasy), an +Engelsburg, and prison-cell, with bread and water. During the honeymoon +I have often followed these poor birds of paradise, or peacocks of +Psyche, and in this moulting-season of theirs picked up the glorious +wing and tail-feathers which they have dropped; and then, when a +husband has fancied he has married a naked crow, I have held out the +bunch of feathers to him. Why is this? For this reason: marriage +overlays the poetical world with the rind of the actual; as (according +to Descartes) our earthly sphere is a sun covered over with a dirty +crust, or bark. The hands of everyday labour are unwieldy, hard, and +full of indurations, and find much difficulty in going on holding, or +drawing the delicate threads of the woof of the ideal. Hence it is +that among the upper classes (where, instead of work-<i>rooms</i> there are +only little work-<i>baskets</i>, and where the little spinning-wheels are +turned on the lap with the finger, and where love still endures after +marriage—often even for the husband) the wedding-ring is not so often, +as among the lower orders, a Gyges-ring, which renders books and the +arts of music, poetry, painting, and dancing—invisible. Upon high +places plants of all sorts, and particularly female plants, have more +vigour and aroma. A woman has not, as a man has, the power of +protecting the outer side of her inner air-and-magic-castles against +rough weather. What then is she to hold to? Her husband. He ought +always to stand beside the liquid silver of the female spirit with a +spoon, and keep skimming off the scum which gathers on it, that the +silver-glittering sheen of the ideal may always keep bright and +shining. But then there are two sorts of husbands—Arcadians, or +lyric-poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau, when their hair +is grey—and these are not to be controlled or comforted when they can +no longer see any gold on the feminine anthology (bound with gilt +edges) because they have turned the leaves of the little book over one +by one, (as is the case with all gilt-edged books). Secondly, there are +shepherd-hinds and sheep-smearers, I mean master-singers by profession, +men-of-business, who thank God when the <i>enchantress</i> turns, at last, +like other witches, into a grumbling <i>house</i>-cat, keeping down the +vermin. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody has to suffer more anxiety and alarm, combined with tedium and +ennui (and therefore I intend some day to awaken the pity of my readers +for this very condition, in a comic biography) than a portly, +energetic, pushing, pompous, ponderous <i>Basso</i> of a “business-man,” who +finds himself (like the elephants in Rome of old) constrained to dance +on the slack-rope of love; and whose deportment and play of feature, in +the circumstances, <i>I</i> think more like those of a marmot than anything +else, when the warmth of a room has awakened him from his winter’s +sleep, and he finds he can’t get properly into the knack of moving. It +is only with widows (who wish less to be loved than to be married) +that a weighty office-holder of this sort can begin his romance at the +place where all the novel-writers leave theirs off—namely, at the +altar-steps. A man, built after this simplest of styles, would find a +great weight lifted from his heart if anybody would only love his +shepherdess <i>for</i> him till such time as he should have nothing to do +but go and be married; and no one would have greater pleasure in taking +up this burden, or cross, from them than myself. I have often thought +of announcing in the public newspapers (except that I was afraid it +would be looked upon as a joke) that I was prepared to swear Platonic, +eternal love to any number of endurable girls (whom men of business +might not even have <i>time</i> to love), and make them all the necessary +love-declarations as plenipotentiary of the bridegroom-elect—in a +word, to lead them on my arm, as <i>substitutus sine spe succedendi</i>, or +<i>cavalier de société</i>, athwart the whole of the unlevel land of love, +till, on the frontier, I should hand over my charge, duly prepared, to +the bridegroom; which would be lovemaking, rather than marrying, by +ambassador. If, according to this <i>systema assistantiæ</i>, there should +be any one who would care to employ the writer even during the +honeymoon (when a certain amount of love may still be expected to crop +up), he must take care to establish all the necessary conditions in +good time, beforehand. +</p> + +<p> +In Siebenkæs’s Lenette (from no fault of his) the ideal isle of the +blest had sunk away, miles deep, in an instant, at the very marriage +altar. The husband could in nowise either help or hinder this. On the +whole, dear Mr. Education-Counsellor Campe, you really should not +strike so hard upon your writing-desk with your school birch-rod +whenever a solitary she-frog croaks out something or other out of the +nearest marsh, which is capable of being sent to an almanack. Ah me! +don’t tear away from the good creatures (who <i>do</i> put the loveliest +dreams, all full of fantasy-flowers, into this empty life of ours) the +terribly short dream of a delicate, sentimental love. They will be +awakened to reality only too soon without that, and neither you nor I +will be able to put them to sleep again, let us write as much as we +choose. +</p> + +<p> +Siebenkæs wrote off that day a brief and hurried reply to the +Schulrath, saying “he was extremely glad that he had stood to the will, +and the laws, and enclosed him a power of attorney to enable him to +draw the money. Only he entreated him, as a great scholar and man of +letters (one of a class who of ten, perhaps, suppose they understand +matters of business better than they really do), to put the whole +affair into a lawyer’s hands to be transacted, inasmuch as <i>Jus</i> is of +little use without jurists—nay, often not of very much even <i>with</i> +them. To <i>review</i> ‘Programmes’ he had no time, let alone to <i>read</i> +them; and he sent his kind regards to his wife.” +</p> + +<p> +It is not displeasing to me that (as I perceive) my readers have all +discovered of themselves that the ghost, or supernatural bow-wow, and +mumbo-jumbo,<a name="div2Ref_112" href="#div2_112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> who had got the trust money out of the Heimlicher’s +clutches more effectually than the whole <i>posse-comitatus</i> of the Court +of Exchequer, was none other than Heinrich Leibgeber, who had availed +himself of his resemblance to the departed Siebenkæs to play the part +of <i>Revenant</i>. I need not, therefore, tell the reader what he knows +already. +</p> + +<p> +When one has at last managed to creep up a steep Alp with the hands +of a tree-frog, one very often finds that, what one looks down at from +the summit is a fresh yawning abyss. Firmian saw a new one under his +feet; he had to abandon the resolution he had taken. I mean, he did not +now dare to say a word to Nathalie about his resurrection from the +charnel-house—his immortality after death. Alas! the happiness of his +Lenette, who (in the utmost innocence) had two husbands, would then be +hanging on the tip of a tongue. The blame would be his, the misery +Lenette’s. No, no (he said); Time will, by slow degrees, lay dust upon +my pale image in Nathalie’s kind heart, and draw the colours out of it. +</p> + +<p> +In brief, he kept silence. The proud Nathalie kept silence also. +In this terrible position of matters, face to face with the hard, +eternal <i>knot</i> of the drama, he passed his anxious hours upon the +stage. The raven-flight of cares and sorrows cast their flitting +shadows over every charm and beauty of the spring, and poisonous dreams +fell upon his sleep like mildew. Every dream-night cut the falling +planetary-knot, and his heart along with it. How would Fate rescue and +recover him from this poison-vapour, this azote-gas, of anguish and +anxiety? How would it cure the finger-worm in his ring finger? By +taking his arm off. One evening, to wit, shortly before bedtime, the +Count was as confidential with him as a man of the world can ever be. +He had something very pleasant to tell him, he said; only he must be +allowed to say something beforehand, by way of a preface or +introduction. It struck him—he went on to say, that, now that his +Inspector had entered upon his duties, he was no longer quite so gay +and full of humour as he had found him to be of old, but rather (if he +might speak openly) downcast at times, and over-sentimental. Yet he had +formerly said himself (but this was the <i>other</i> Leibgeber) that he +would rather hear a man swear at a mischance than lament over it; and +that one might have his feet sticking in the winter, and his nose in +the spring, and smell a flower, though in the midst of snow. “I forgive +it, at once, for perhaps I guess the reason of it,” he added. But his +forgiveness was really not quite genuine. For, like all the great, to +him strength of feeling, even of a loving sort—but still more, of a +sorrowful—was an annoyance; and a strong handclasp of friendship was +almost as bad as a crunch on the toes. He demanded of pain that it +should pass before him with a smile—of wickedness and evil, that they +should pass him by laughing, or, at all events, laughed <i>at</i>—as, +indeed, the coldest men of the world are like the physical man, whose +highest temperature is about the region of the diaphragm.<a name="div2Ref_113" href="#div2_113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> +Consequently, the previous Leibgeber—that storm-windy, but, at the +same time, serene blue sky—naturally suited the Count better than this +so-called Leibgeber. But how differently from us who <i>read</i> this little +reproach quietly, did Siebenkæs listen to it! These <i>solar eclipses</i> of +his Leibgeber (which really were not even so much as <i>sun spots</i> +belonging to <i>him</i>, but merely <i>apparent</i> shadows cast on him by +Siebenkæs, by reason of the position he chanced to occupy) the latter +reproached himself with as so many deadly sins against his friend, +which he felt it absolutely necessary to confess and do penance for. +</p> + +<p> +As the Count now went on to say, “This melancholy of yours can scarcely +be caused altogether by grief at the loss of your friend Siebenkæs, +because since his death you have never spoken to me of him with such +warmth as when he was alive. Pardon me this frankness,”—a fresh pang +at this shadowing of Leibgeber cut across his brow, and it was with +difficulty that he could allow his patron to finish his explanation. +“But this is not a shortcoming in <i>my</i> eyes, dear Leibgeber: on the +contrary, it is an excellence. We ought not to go on eternally mourning +for the dead; if we grieve at all, it should be for the living. And +even the latter species of grief may come to an end with you next week, +for then I expect my daughter, and” (he spoke here very deliberately) +“her friend Nathalie with her. They have met <i>en route</i>.” Siebenkæs +sprang hastily up, stood speechless and motionless, held his hand +before his eyes, not to hide them, but to keep the light out of +them, so that he might look through, and follow the course of, the +cloud-masses of thought which were piled one over another and rolling +in all directions, ere he should give his answer. +</p> + +<p> +But the Count—misconstruing him (as Leibgeber) in all points, and +ascribing his sentimental metamorphosis to Nathalie’s account, and the +fact of his being deprived of her—begged him merely to hear him out +before speaking, and to accept his assurance that he would be delighted +to do everything in his power to retain his daughter’s lovely friend +always in the neighbourhood. Heavens! what thousandfold entanglement +the Count made of a matter so wholly simple! +</p> + +<p> +Here Siebenkæs, stormed at from fresh points of the compass, had to beg +for a moment to think—for there were now <i>three</i> souls at stake—but +he had scarcely taken one or two hasty steps across the room, when he +stood firm again, and said to the Count, and to himself, “Yes, I shall +do what is right.” Then he begged the Count to give his word of honour +that he would keep inviolate a secret which he would confide to him, +and which neither related to, nor would injure, himself or his daughter +in the slightest degree. “In that case why should I not?” answered the +Count, to whom the discovery of a secret was as the clearing away of a +thick woodland before a fine view. +</p> + +<p> +Then Firmian opened his heart, his life, and everything, like a stream +let loose and dashing into a new channel, not yet to be measured with a +glance. The Count several times detained him by fresh misunderstandings, +because he had only preassumed, out of his own imagination, a love on +Nathalie’s part for the real Leibgeber, and had never heard from any +one of her real love for Siebenkæs. +</p> + +<p> +And now the astonished Count, in his turn, astonished the Advocate; +and, of all the many faces which in such a case he might have put +on—faces offended, angry, startled, embarrassed, delighted, cold—he +only showed the Inspector an exceedingly contented one. It only +particularly pleased him, he said, that he <i>had</i> observed so many +little matters which rather vexed him, and that in certain points he +had <i>not</i> thought over-highly of Leibgeber; but what delighted him most +was his good fortune at possessing, in this manner, a <i>double</i> +Leibgeber, and the knowledge that the absent one was not sorrowing for +a dead friend. +</p> + +<p> +Let no one be surprised at the Count’s maintaining his good-humour and +serenity who has seen a bright order-star sparkle on an aged, and +extinguished, breast. When our old man of the world beheld the little +shuttle of this chain of friends flying to and fro between love and +sacrifice on either side; when he held in his hand the bright +Raphael-tapestry of friendship which it wove, and looked at it closely, +there came to him the enjoyment of <i>something new</i>, for the first time +for many years. So that, up to this point, he had been sitting in his +front box before a living comic-historical drama, of which he himself +unravelled the plot, and which could be performed all over again in his +head at any given moment. Moreover, his Inspector had become a new +being for him, full of fresh entertainment, inasmuch as he had gone off +the stage, changed his dress and re-entered as the pseudo-deceased +Siebenkæs; and could, in the future, tell him as much as he +pleased of the narrator. In this way both the friends had become +flatteringly-precious to him, by reason of the dependent interest in +him with which they had interwoven the bond which bound their souls. +</p> + +<p> +He who has tasted the bliss of sticking to the truth can understand +the new delight with which Siebenkæs could now pour himself +out unrestrained concerning everything—himself and Henry and +Nathalie—inasmuch as it was not till now that he felt the full weight +of the burden he had got relieved of—that of working the light, +jest-falsehood of a moment into a yearly comedy, in 365 acts. With what +ease he explained to the Count that, before Nathalie’s arrival (whom he +could neither undeceive, nor go on deceiving), he must fly, and that +straight to Kuhschnappel. As the Count listened, he told him all the +reasons urging him to go; longing to see his tombstone, and unhallowed +grave, so as to do penitence and expiation; longing to see Lenette, +unseen, from afar, perhaps her child near; longing to hear from +eye-witnesses a minute account of her happy married life with Stiefel +(for Stiefel’s letter had wafted the flower ashes of bygone days into +his eyes, and opened the leaves of the sleeping-flower of his conjugal +love); longing to wander, romantically (erect now, and with his burden +off), about the scenes of his old oppressed life; longing to hear, in +the market-town, something of his Leibgeber, who had been there so +recently; longing to celebrate August, the month of his death, in +solitude—the month when it had been with him as with the vine, whose +leaves are taken off in August, that the sun may shine more warmly on +the grapes. +</p> + +<p> +In three words, for why give many reasons—since when once there is a +<i>will</i>, there can never be any lack of <i>reasons</i>—he set off. +</p> + +<hr class="W20" /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="div1Ref_ch25"></a>CHAPTER XXV., AND LAST.</h2> + +<p class="center">THE JOURNEY—THE CHURCHYARD—THE SPECTRE—THE END OF THE TROUBLE, +AND OF THE BOOK. +</p> + +<p> +I see more clearly every day that I and the other 999,999,999 human +beings,<a name="div2Ref_114" href="#div2_114"><sup>[114]</sup></a> are nothing but so much skin-and-bone stuffed (like cooked +chickens), full of a mass of incongruities, contradictions, +inconsistencies, irremediable insufficiencies, and resolves, of which +every one has its antagonist muscle (<i>musc. antagonista</i>). We do not +contradict other people half as often as ourselves. This last Chapter +is a fresh proof of it. Up to this point, the reader and I have been +labouring together with the sole object of finishing this Book, and now +that we see the shore, and have all but reached it, we are both sorry +for it. I shall, at all events, be doing something—the most that I +can—if I conceal, and hide away (so to speak) the end of it, as we do +the end of a garden, and say several things which will help to lengthen +out the work a little. +</p> + +<p> +The Inspector sprang out into the open country, among the corn-ears, +fortified with a muscular, full breast—the Alp of silence and +deception no longer weighed upon him as it had done. The avalanche +which had overwhelmed his life had melted to a third of its original +size Tinder the sun of his present fair fortune. His electric +Leyden-jar coating with a better income, and even the fact of his +having a great deal more to do, had charged him with fire and courage. +His appointment was a mountain permeated by so many veins of silver and +gold, that even in this first year of it he had found he was enabled to +send sundry anonymous contributions to the Prussian Widows’ Fund, so as +to make amends for a good half of his fraud upon it, and see his way to +finally clearing it off altogether. I should not lay this act of duty +before the public gaze were it not that Kritter, in Göttingen—who +reckons that this fund will be exhausted in the year 1804—or even +calculators more moderate in their results, who think its extreme +unction will be received in 1825, might take occasion, from these +Flower-pieces of mine, to lay its death wholly at the Inspector’s door. +If this should prove to be the case, I should very deeply regret having +alluded to the subject, in the remotest manner, in my Flower-pieces. +</p> + +<p> +He did not take his way by Hof or Bayreuth, or any of the old romantic +journey-roads. He dreaded lest the hand of Fate (which sows behind the +clouds) might bring his phantom-body before Nathalie’s eyes. And yet he +hoped a little that this said hand might bring him just the least bit +in contact with his Leibgeber, since <i>he</i> had been so recently +cruising in these waters. As a matter of course, he had embodied +himself, <i>en route</i>, in the said Leibgeber’s shirt, jacket, and +complete exterior—the same which he had swopped with him in the inn at +Gefrees and this costume was a mirror which continually showed him the +absent one’s image. A “Saufinder,” like Leibgeber’s, who lifted his +head up to him in a forest-cottage, sent a throb of joy through his +heart; but the dog’s nose knew him as little as did the dog’s master. +</p> + +<p> +And yet, the nearer he drew to the hills and woods, behind whose +Chinese churchyard-wall stood his two empty houses—his grave and his +old lodging—the tighter did Anxiety draw her drag-net about his +heart. It was not the fear of being recognised; this, by reason of his +resemblance to Leibgeber (particularly in his present dress), was an +impossibility. Nay, people would sooner have taken him for his own +wraith and Prophet Samuel than for Siebenkæs still in the body. But, +besides love and anticipation, there was a something which made him +anxious—a something which once hemmed in and oppressed myself when I +came back among the Herculanean antiquities of my own childhood. There +clasped themselves once more around my breast the iron bands and rings +which had crushed it in my childhood—a time when the little human +creature is still tremblingly helpless and comfortless in presence of +the sorrows and sufferings of life and death—when we stand between the +footstool we have cast away, the handcuffs and ankle-chains which we +have burst asunder, and the great sighing and singing tree of +philosophy which is to guide us to the free, open battle-arena and +coronation city of this earth. In every thicket round which Firmian had +wandered in his poverty-stricken, miserable winter-autumn, he saw the +cast-off skins of the snakes sticking, which in former days had twined +themselves about his feet. Remembrance (that after-winter of his hard, +cruel days) fell into this lovelier time of his life, and the +combination of these dissimilar feelings—the clasp of the old fetters, +and the breeze of freedom of the present—generated a third sensation, +which was bitter-sweet, as well as anxious and uneasy. +</p> + +<p> +When it was twilight, he walked slowly and observantly through the +streets, which were strewn with scattered ears of corn. Every child he +met going home with the supper-beer, every familiar dog, and every +well-remembered cling of a bell, was full of fossil-impressions of +joy-roses and passion-flowers, the originals of which were all fallen +to dust. As he passed the house where he used to live, he heard two +stocking-looms clattering and rattling there. +</p> + +<p> +He took up his quarters in the Lizard Inn, which cannot have been the +grandest hotel in the town, inasmuch as the Advocate ate his beef on a +pewter-platter, which (to judge by the marks and <i>stigmata</i> of a +facsimile of his own knife which it bore), seemed to have once been +enrolled as a soldier of his own pawned-plate-militia regiment. +However, the inn had this advantage—that Firmian could occupy the +little room, number seven, on the third story, and there establish a +star-observatory, or mast-head crow’s-nest, which commanded Stiefel’s +study just opposite, at a somewhat lower elevation. But his Lenette +never came to the window. Ah! if he had seen her, he would have knelt +on the floor for sheer sorrow. Not till it was quite dark did he see +his old friend Stiefel, who came and held a printed sheet—probably a +proof of the ‘German Programme Advertiser’—against the red western +sky, it being too dark to see it inside. He was surprised to see the +Schulrath look so worn and bowed—and he had a crape on his arm too. +“Can my Lenette’s poor baby be dead?” he thought. +</p> + +<p> +When it was quite late he crept, all trembling, to that garden, whence +we do not all return, and which is bounded by the hanging Eden-Garden +of the second life. In the churchyard he was safe from the approach of +spectators, thanks to the ghost-stories by means of which Leibgeber had +forced his inheritance out of his guardian’s clutches. On his way to +his own vacant, subterranean bed, he passed by the grave on which +(while it was black, it was grass-grown now) he had placed the +flower-garland which he had <i>meant</i> to give Lenette a pleasant surprise +with, though it <i>did</i> only cause her an unexpected sorrow. At last he +came to the bed-curtains of that grave-siesta, his own tombstone, and +he read the inscription with a cold shudder. “Suppose this stone +trap-door were lying upon your face,” he said to himself, “building you +in from the wide heavens!”—and he thought what clouds, what coldness, +and night, reign around the two poles of life, as about the poles of +our earth—about the beginning and the end of man. He considered it a +very wicked thing to have aped the last hour—the crape-streamer of a +long, dark cloud was over the moon, his heart was tender and anxious; +when suddenly a something with colour in it, near his grave, seized his +attention, and caused a revulsion in his soul. +</p> + +<p> +For there, close beside it, was a fresh grave, quite recently covered +in, surrounded by a painted wooden-frame, not unlike a bedstead. And +upon these painted boards Firmian (as long as his streaming eyes +allowed him) read what follows:— +</p> + +<p> +“Here reposes in God, Wendeline Lenette Stiefel, born Engelkraut of +Augspurg. Her first husband was the lamented Poor’s Advocate, F. St. +Siebenkæs. On the 20th of October, 1786, she entered, for the second +time, into holy matrimony with the Schulrath Stiefel, of this place, +and after three-quarters of a year of a peaceful union with him, she +fell asleep in childbed, on the 22nd of July, 1787, and lies here, with +her little still-born daughter, awaiting a joyful resurrection.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! poor creature, poor creature!” More he could not <i>think</i>. Now—now +that her day of life was better and warmer, the earth must swallow her, +and she take nothing with her but a hand roughened by labour, a face +furrowed with the death-bed sickness, and a contented, but empty heart, +which, hemmed down among the hollow-ways and mine-shafts of this world, +had seen scarcely any stars or flowery meadows. Her troubles had +gradually clouded over her life so thickly and darkly, that no +picturing fancy could brighten and purify them by the colour-play of +poesy, just as no rainbow is possible when the whole sky is black with +rain. “Why did I vex you so often, and pain you, even by my death, and +be so unforgiving to all your little innocent crotchets?” he said, +weeping bitterly. An earth-worm came twining out of the grave, and he +threw it forcibly away, as though it had come straight from the beloved +cold heart; although that which satiates this creature is what satiates +<i>us</i> also at last—EARTH. He thought of the child (mouldering to dust) +which laid its thin, withered arms about his soul, as if it had been +his own, and to which Death had given as much as a God gave to +Endymion—sleep, eternal youth, and immortality. At length he tottered +away from this place of mourning with his heart wearied, not lightened, +by his tears. +</p> + +<p> +When he went back to the inn, a woman with a harp was singing in the +public room (a boy accompanying her on a flute) a song, of which the +<i>ritournelle</i> was, “dead is dead, and gone is gone.” It was the same +woman who had been playing and singing on the New Year’s eve when his +Lenette, now departed and at peace, had buried her face in the +handkerchief, weeping and desolate. Oh! the burning arrows of these +music-tones went hissing through his heart—the poor soul had no +shield. “I tortured her terribly in these days” (he went on constantly +saying). “<i>How</i> she sighed! <i>How</i> she kept silence! Ah! if you could +but see me now from on high, now that you are happier! If you could but +behold this bleeding soul of mine—not that you should forgive me, no, +only that I might have the consolation of suffering something for your +sake! Oh! how different would I be to you <i>now</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +And this is what we all say when we bury some one whom we have +tortured; but on that very same evening of mourning we go and dart the +javelin deep into some other breast which is still warm. Oh! weaklings +that we are, strong only in resolves! If that form, now resolved into +its elements, whose mouldering wounds (which we ourselves inflicted) we +expiate with tears of penitence and warm resolves to do better, were to +come back to us to-day, new-created, and in the brightest bloom of +youth, it would be but for the first week that we should clasp the +newfound soul, more fondly loved than ever, to our hearts; and then we +should apply the old martyrdom instruments to it again, just as of old. +That we should do this, even to our beloved dead, I deduce from the +fact (to say nothing of our rude unkindness to the living) that, in our +dreams, when those whom we have lost revisit us again, we act over +again everything which we now repent. I do not say this to deprive any +mourner of the consolation of repentance, or of the thought, that his +love for the lost one is purer and fonder than before, but to lessen +the pride which may be grounded upon the repentance and the data of +feelings. +</p> + +<p> +Later in the night, when Firmian saw the face (gnawed and sunken with +sorrow) of his old friend (who had now so little left to him), looking +up to heaven, as if seeking there among the stars his friend of whom he +was bereaved, sorrow pressed the last tear from his anguished heart, +and in the madness of grief he cast the blame upon himself of his +friend’s sorrow; jut as if the latter had not a great deal to thank him +for in the first instance, before setting about pardoning him. +</p> + +<p> +He awoke in all the exhaustion of sorrow, i.e. in that <i>bled-away</i> +condition of the feelings which at last resolves itself into a sweet +melting-away and longing for death. For he had lost everything—even +what was <i>not</i> buried. He dared not go to the Schulrath for fear of +being recognised, or, at the very lowest, staking upon a most dangerous +chance the peace of mind of that most innocent creature, who would +never be able to reconcile it to either his conscience or his sense of +honour, that he had married a woman whose husband was still alive. +</p> + +<p> +But he could go and see Meerbitzer, the hairdresser, with, less danger +of discovering himself, and could carry away from him a great dowry of +news. Moreover, the sickle of Death had cut through all his <i>other</i> +chains and knots, together with his bonds of love. He would be doing no +injury to any one but himself if he took off his mask of death, and +showed himself unmouldered to other people, nay, even to the sorrowing +Nathalie; particularly as on very beautiful evenings, and whenever he +did any good action, his conscience claimed the arrear-interest of the +unpaid debt of truth, refusing to grant any further letters of respite. +Also his soul swore, as a God swears to his own self, that he would +only stay there this one day, and then never come back. +</p> + +<p> +The Friseur knew in a moment, from the lameness, that he could be +nobody but the Vaduz Inspector, Leibgeber. Like posterity, he decked +his own lodger, Siebenkæs, with the richest of rosemary-garlands, and +declared that these ragamuffins of stocking-weavers whom he had got +upstairs now were not to be spoken of in the same day with poor +lamented Mr. Siebenkæs. The whole house creaked when they rattled and +stamped in their upstairs-room. He then called attention to the +circumstance that the departed had taken his wife away to him within +the space of a year and day; and dwelt on the fact that she had never +forgotten the Meerbitzer’s house, but had often looked in of an evening +in her widow’s weeds (which she had been buried in according to her +desire), and spoken with them about all her various vicissitudes, and +about her new life. “They lived together just like two children,” the +hairdresser said, “Stiefel and she.” This conversation, the house, and +his old rooms, so noisy now, were all so many waste places of his +ruined Jerusalem. A stocking-loom now stood where his writing-table +used to be, and so on. All his questions about the past were so +many conflagration-relics, collected for the fresh building of his +burnt-down pleasure-chateaux from out their Phœnix ashes. Hope is +the morning Aurora of joy, and memory its red evening sky; but the +latter is terribly apt to drop down in grey dew or rain, with no colour +left in it. The blue day, which the red sky gives promise of, <i>does</i>, +indeed, break in brightness; but it is in another world, where there is +another sun. Meerbitzer unknowingly cleft, deep and wide, the split +into which he grafted the sundered flower-twigs of the bygone days on +to Firmian’s heart; and when, finally, his wife related how, when +Lenette had taken the Communion of the Sick, she said to the evening +preacher, “I <i>shall</i> go to my Firmian when I am dead, shall I not?” +Firmian averted his breast from this blind dagger-thrust, and hurried +out into the open air, that he might not encounter any one to whom he +should be constrained to lie. +</p> + +<p> +Yet he could not but long for some human creature, even were one to be +found nowhere else but beneath his lowliest roof of all—in the +churchyard. The electrically-charged atmosphere of the evening brooded +and hatched melancholy longings of every kind; the sky was overspread +with scattered unripe fragments of a thunder-cloud, and in the west +horizon a muttering storm had begun, scattering its lighted pitch-rings +and full-charged clouds down upon unknown lands. He went home; but as +he passed by the tall railings of Blaise’s garden, he fancied he saw a +figure like Nathalie, dressed in black, glide into the arbour. And +then, for the first time, he turned his mind to something which +Meerbitzer had said about a lady in mourning, who had come a few days +before, and wished to be shown all over the house, lingering +particularly in Siebenkæs’s old rooms, and making a great many +inquiries. That she should have come out of her road on her way to +Vaduz was by no means unlikely; indeed, it was very consistent with her +romantic turn of mind, particularly as she had never seen Siebenkæs’s +former home, and the Inspector had not answered her letter—as Rosa +was married, and Blaise reconciled to her (since he had seen the +ghost)—and the month of Firmian’s death would naturally suggest to her +a visit to his last resting-place. +</p> + +<p> +So that her friend could not but dwell all this evening with feelings +of painful fondness upon her memory—the one unclouded star which +beamed on him from the overcast heaven of his bygone days. It was deep +in the gloaming now, a cooler air was stirring. A storm had spent its +force in other regions, and there remained only some broken, lurid +clouds, piled in the sky like glowing, half-burned firebrands. He +betook himself, for a last time, to the place where death had planted +the red carnation, with its little buds snapped so untimely from its +stem. But within his soul, as without him, the air breathed less +sultrily now, and fresher; tears had blunted the sharp edge of the +first bitterness of his sorrow. He felt, with far more of gentleness, +that the earth is only our <span class="sc2">CARPENTER’S YARD</span>, not our <span class="sc2">BUILDING-GROUND</span>. +In the East, where the stars were rising, a long blue streak shone +above the sunken thunder-clouds. The moon (light-magnet of the sky) was +lying, like a fount of light, upon the foil of a cleft cloud, and the +wide vaporous veil was melting motionlessly away. +</p> + +<p> +When Firmian, approaching the beloved grave, raised up his downcast +head, he saw a dark form resting there. He stopped short, and gazed +more piercingly. The form was a woman’s. Her face, frozen into the ice +of death, was fixed on him. As he drew nearer, he saw his dearest +Nathalie leaning overpowered against the painted railing of the grave. +The autumnal breath of death had tinted her lips and cheeks with white; +her wide eyes were sightless, and nothing but the tear-drops which hung +on her lashes gave proof that she was in life, and had taken him for +the apparition of which she had heard so much. In the excess of her +romantic sorrow at his grave she had longed, in the strength and +loneliness of her heart, that his spirit might appear to her; and when +she saw him approaching, she thought Heaven had granted her prayer. And +then the iron hand of chill terror turned this red rose to a white one. +But ah, her friend was the more wretched of the two. His tender, +unshielded heart was crushed motionless between the impact of two +worlds which rushed crashing together. In tones of utter distress he +cried out, “Nathalie! Nathalie!” Her lips quivered spasmodically, and a +breath of life gave back a shade of brightness to her glance; but the +spirit was still there before her, and she closed her eyes again, and +said, with a shudder, “Oh God!” It was in vain that his voice called +her back to life; when she looked up at the apparition her heart failed +her again, and she could only cry “Oh God!” Firmian seizing her hand, +cried, “Angel of heaven, I am not dead! only look at me! Nathalie, +don’t you know me? Oh! merciful God, don’t punish me so terribly, don’t +let me be the cause of her death!” At length she slowly lifted her +heavy eyelids, and saw her old friend trembling beside her, with tears +of anxiety and terror. His tears were happier, but more abundant, and +he smiled sorrowfully upon her as she still kept her eyes open, and +said, “Nathalie, I am still upon this earth, in very truth, and suffer +as you do yourself; don’t you see how I tremble on your account? Take +my warm, living hand. Are you still afraid?” “No,” she answered +faintly; but she still looked at him in an awe-stricken fashion, as at +a super-earthly being, and had not courage to ask for an explanation of +the riddle. He helped her to rise (gently weeping), and said, “But, +dear innocent one, come away from this place of sorrow, where so many +tears have been shed already. For <i>your</i> heart mine has no secrets now. +Ah! I can tell <i>you</i> everything, and I <i>will</i> tell you everything.” He +led her out, above the quiet dead, through the back gate of the +churchyard. She leaned on his arm heavily and languidly, shuddering +again often as they climbed the little height, and only the tears which +joy, relief from terror, grief, and exhaustion combined, had brought to +her eyes, fell like warm balsam upon her chilled and wounded heart. +</p> + +<p> +When they reached the top of the height she sat down to rest, and the +black night-woods, railed round by white harvests, and cut across by +the moon’s silent sea of light, lay before them. Nature had drawn out +the “pianissimo lute” organ-stop of midnight, and by Nathalie’s side +stood one of her beloved dead, new-risen from the grave. He told her +now all about Leibgeber’s entreaties; the short story of his mock-death; +his residence with the Count; all the longings and tears of his long +solitude; his firm determination rather to fly from her than to deceive +or wound her beloved heart, either by speech or in writing; and the +disclosures he had made to her friend’s father. She sobbed at the +account of his last moments and parting from Lenette, as if it had all +been real. She thought on many things as she merely said, “Ah! it was +only for other people’s happiness that you sacrificed yourself. But +you will be able to have done with all this deception <i>now</i>, and to +make amends for it, will you not?” “I shall,” he said, “to the very +utmost of my power; and my heart and my conscience shall be free and +clear once more. Have I not even kept the vow I made to <i>you</i>—that +I should not see you again till after my death?” She smiled gently. +</p> + +<p> +They both sunk into a dreamy and blissful silence. At last, seeing her +lay a mourning-cloak butterfly<a name="div2Ref_115" href="#div2_115"><sup>[115]</sup></a> (disabled by the night-dew) down +upon her lap, the fact that she was in mourning herself struck him for +the first time, and he hastily asked, “<i>You</i> are not in mourning for +any one, are you?” Alas! she had put it on for <i>him</i>. “Not <i>now</i>,” +Nathalie answered, and, looking at the butterfly, she said pityingly, +“a few <i>drops</i> and a little <i>chilliness</i> have benumbed the poor +thing.” +Her friend reflected how easily Fate might have punished <i>his</i> temerity +by benumbing the even more beautiful, black-attired creature by his +side, who had, moreover, had her full share already of shivering in the +night-frosts of life and the night-dew of tears. But he could not +answer her for love and pain. +</p> + +<p> +They kept silence now, reading each other’s thoughts, lost, half in +their hearts, half in the grandeur of night. The wide æther had +absorbed all the clouds (only those of the sky, alas!); Luna bent down, +with her saintly halo, like a glorified Madonna, from the tranquil +blue, to greet her pale sister of the earth. The voice of the stream +was heard, as it flowed on its course unseen, hidden by a light +mist—like the stream of time, hidden from sight by the haze of +countries and nations. Behind them the night-breeze had laid itself to +rest upon a swelling, rushing bed of corn, bestreaked with blue +corn-flowers; and before them lay the reaped harvest of the world to +come—precious stones (as it were) in their coffin-settings, cold and +heavy in death.<a name="div2Ref_116" href="#div2_116"><sup>[116]</sup></a> The pious and humble ones (forming an antithesis +to the sunflower and the mote in the sunbeam) turned as moon-flowers to +the moon, and played as moonbeam-motes in her cool rays, feeling that +there is nothing under the starry sky so great as hope. +</p> + +<p> +Nathalie leant on Firmian’s hand, that he might help her to rise, and +said, “I feel quite able to go home now.” He kept hold of her hand, but +did not rise nor speak. He was gazing at the dry, prickly stalk of the +old rose-twig which she had given him. Unwittingly, and without feeling +what he was doing, he pressed the thorns into his fingers. His laden +bosom heaved with deeper, warmer sighs; burning tears stood in his +eyes, and the moon’s light trembled before them like a shower of +falling light. A whole universe lay upon his soul and upon his tongue, +and kept both motionless. +</p> + +<p> +“Firmian,” said Nathalie, “what would you have?” He bent his fixed eyes +widely opened upon her gentle form, and pointed down to his grave in +the valley. “My house down there,” he answered, “which has been empty +so long. For the bed on which we dream this dream of life is terribly +hard.” +</p> + +<p> +He lost command of himself, for she wept so terribly—and her face, all +heavenly kindness, was so near—and he burst forth, with the bitterest +and strongest emotion, “Are not all my loved ones gone, and are not +<i>you</i> going too? Ah! why has torturing destiny laid the waxen image of +an angel upon all our breasts,<a name="div2Ref_117" href="#div2_117"><sup>[117]</sup></a> and lowered us into the chill life? +Oh! the soft image melts away, and there is no angel. Yes, <i>you</i> HAVE +appeared to me, it is true, but you disappear, and time will crush to +atoms your image on my heart, ay, and my heart with it. For when I have +lost <i>you</i>, I <i>shall</i> be alone in earnest. But, fare you well! I +<i>shall</i> actually die one day, and <i>then</i> I shall appear to you; but +not +as I have done to-night. Ah! nowhere but in eternity, and then I shall +say to you, ‘Oh! Nathalie, I loved you there below with infinite, +unending grief and sorrow; make amends to me <i>here</i>!’” She strove to +answer, but her voice broke and failed her. She raised her great eyes +to the starry sky, but they were full of tears. She tried to rise, but +her friend held her, with his hand all thorns and blood, and said, +“<i>Can</i> you leave me, Nathalie?” +</p> + +<p> +She arose here, sublime and grand, bent her head back, looking upward +to the sky, rapidly swept away the tears from her eyes; her soaring +soul found words, and, clasping her hands in prayer, she said, “Oh! +THOU who art all love, and lovest ALL, he has been lost to me, I have +found him again; eternity is here on earth; make THOU him happy through +me!” And her head sank down on his, tenderly and languidly, and she +said, +</p> + +<p> +“<i>We are going to be always </i><span class="sc2">TOGETHER</span>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh God!” stammered Firmian; “Oh angel! you are going to be always +<i>with</i> me—in this world and the next!” +</p> + +<p> +“For ever, Firmian!” said Nathalie, softly. And our friend’s troubles +were over and past. +</p> + +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_01" href="#div2Ref_01">1</a>: Name of one of the +author’s other works. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_02" href="#div2Ref_02">2</a>: Other works of his. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_03" href="#div2Ref_03">3</a>: Second Book in the +translation. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_04" href="#div2Ref_04">4</a>: The chapters in one +of the author’s books are called “Dog +Post Days,” for a reason therein explained. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_05" href="#div2Ref_05">5</a>: This means, in +German, one who pays no fare. Puns which +are not translatable must be “explained,” or else the sentence left +out. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_06" href="#div2Ref_06">6</a>: This is how all +these pieces were really arranged in the +first, unimproved edition; but I am sure Pauline won’t be offended +that, in the second edition (so strikingly improved) I have adverted +more to the entire German empire, and arranged them very differently. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_07" href="#div2Ref_07">7</a>: I earnestly beg +that section of the public the description +of which is here levelled at the head of the shopkeeper-captain not to +suppose it is meant for <i>them</i>; they must see that I am only joking, +and my intention, of course is clear. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_08" href="#div2Ref_08">8</a>: The Koran says, the +devils were compelled to serve and +obey Solomon. After his death he was stuffed, and, by means of a stick +in his hand, and another propping him up about the <i>os coccygis</i>, kept +on such an apparent footing of being alive, that the devils themselves +were taken in by it, until the hinder axis of him was eaten by worms, +and the sovereign rolled over topsy-turvy.—See Boysen’s Koran in +Michaelis’ ‘Orient. Bibl.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_09" href="#div2Ref_09">9</a>: Untranslatable pun. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_10" href="#div2Ref_10">10</a>: Or “Poor’s +Advocate” (more literally). The appointment so +named, exists, or lately existed, in Scotland. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_11" href="#div2Ref_11">11</a>: The “Grandfather +Dance” is equivalent to the English “Sir +Roger de Coverley.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_12" href="#div2Ref_12">12</a>: Wilhelm’s +‘Recreations in Natural History. Insects.’ Vol. +i. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_13" href="#div2Ref_13">13</a>: Siebenkæs means +“seven cheeses.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_14" href="#div2Ref_14">14</a>: Sky-blue is the +colour of the order of the Jesuits, as +also of the Indian Krisna, and of anger. The hypothesis of the natural +philosopher Marat, that blue and red together make black, should be +experimented upon, by mixing the cardinal’s red with the Jesuit’s blue. +Ho himself, subsequently, during the French Revolution, produced from +blue, red, and white the most beautiful ivory black, or the Indian ink +with which Napoleon afterwards painted. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_15" href="#div2Ref_15">15</a>: He styles mankind +his brethren, as many monks, princes, +and religious persons are given to do to each other, and perhaps he is +right in so doing, seeing that he treats these brethren of his just as +many eastern princes treat theirs, and, in fact, more kindly, +beheading, blinding, and cutting them up in a spiritual sense only, not +in corporeal. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_16" href="#div2Ref_16">16</a>: The same robbing, +strangling paw is masked in both under +the likeness of the track of a man. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_17" href="#div2Ref_17">17</a>: ‘Sp.’ 547, N. Tr. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_18" href="#div2Ref_18">18</a>: The Heimlicher of +Freyburg is inviolable for three years +during his tenure of office, and for three years after it expires. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_19" href="#div2Ref_19">19</a>: It consisted +chiefly of curious coins, vicariat-dollars, +&c. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_20" href="#div2Ref_20">20</a>: Plato likens our +lower passions to animals kicking inside +us. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_21" href="#div2Ref_21">21</a>: He happened to +have the case of one to defend, just +then. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_22" href="#div2Ref_22">22</a>: The book was +published in 1789, by Beckmann of Gera, and +was entitled, ‘Selections from the Devil’s Papers.’ I shall venture to +express my opinion on these satires further on. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_23" href="#div2Ref_23">23</a>: The fashionable +waistcoats of those days had animals and +flowers upon them. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_24" href="#div2Ref_24">24</a>: For the next six +pages or so the original literally +<i>bristles</i> with untranslatable puns and plays upon words.—Translator. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_25" href="#div2Ref_25">25</a>: Mosheim’s +‘Ecclesiastical History.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_26" href="#div2Ref_26">26</a>: Gold in leaves, of +two colours, used by bookbinders. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_27" href="#div2Ref_27">27</a>: According to +Klüber’s notes to Delacurne de Sainte Palaye +on Chivalry, this was the title of the official who superintended the +tourney, or gymnastic practices and exercises. There are at the present +day certain private tutors in aristocratic families who are feeble +imitations of him. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_28" href="#div2Ref_28">28</a>: In this last +speech Lenette makes use of several of the +obsolete forms of verbs referred to in a previous chapter as “religious +antiquities out of Luther’s Bible.” I cannot give English equivalents. +Of course what follows would be unintelligibly without this +explanation.—Translator. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_29" href="#div2Ref_29">29</a>: The French +academician, N. Beurion, made out that Adam +was 123 feet 9 inches high, and Eve 118 feet 9-3/4 inches. The rest is +related by the Rabbin, that Adam went through the ocean after his +fall. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_30" href="#div2Ref_30">30</a>: The members of +this celebrated sect went to church +without any clothes on them. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_31" href="#div2Ref_31">31</a>: It seems almost to +indicate a crossing of the breeds +between the grave tiger and the playful ape, that the Place de Grève in +Paris is the place where malefactors are executed, and where the +populace assemble for fêtes—that on the selfsame spot horses tear a +regicide to pieces and citizens celebrate the accession of a new king; +the fire wheels of the fireworks and of the people who are broken on +the wheel whirling at the selfsame time and place. Frightful contrasts! +we may not adduce others lest we should get to imitating those whom we +have here found fault with. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_32" href="#div2Ref_32">32</a>: This is an +allusion to ‘Hesperus.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_33" href="#div2Ref_33">33</a>: Jocular discourses +were delivered on Easter Sunday in the +middle-ages, and went by the name of “Christian Easter-Merriment.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_34" href="#div2Ref_34">34</a>: In the 3rd part of +the Lichtenberg Philosophical +Magazine,’ the case is mentioned of a woman, who, while smelling at a +flower, inhaled a worm into her brain, which tormented her with +delirium, headache, &c., till it came out at her nose again, still +alive. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_35" href="#div2Ref_35">35</a>: Voltaire proves +that a person who is 23 years old, has +only lived 3½ years in the proper sense of the word. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_36" href="#div2Ref_36">36</a>: The poisonous Boa +Upas, beneath which one loses one’s +hair in a few minutes. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_37" href="#div2Ref_37">37</a>: The musicians +among the ancients wore them. Bartholin de +Tib. Vet. iii. 4. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_38" href="#div2Ref_38">38</a>: The common German +dinner-time then.—<span class="sc">Translator</span>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_39" href="#div2Ref_39">39</a>: So do men forget +it, though in a lesser degree. Suppose a +man who does ninety things every day, accurately remembering them, +should once or twice forget a ninety-first thing, he’ll go on +forgetting that afterwards, though he remembers all the rest. There’s +no remedy for this unless some person happens to come in, or something +chances to occur just at the instant of forgetting, and recalls the +ninety-first thing to his mind. If he once forgets to forget, he won’t +forget any more. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_40" href="#div2Ref_40">40</a>: According to the +Rabbin, the pains of the damned are +intermitted on the Sabbath; the Christians hold that the same was the +case during the descent into Hades. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_41" href="#div2Ref_41">41</a>: In Bern and the +Pays-du-Vaud, two male witnesses, or four +female, are necessary for a legal proof. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_42" href="#div2Ref_42">42</a>: The sand-glass is +upright during the time the torture +goes on. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_43" href="#div2Ref_43">43</a>: We cannot say, +however, that it is by carrying away +noxious vapours that the wind purifies the air, since while it blows +<i>my</i> noxious emanations to the person behind me, it brings me those of +the person before me; and because stagnant water does not become putrid +solely because there is no current to carry away decaying matter. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_44" href="#div2Ref_44">44</a>: A woman finds it +much easier to yield and say nothing +when she is in the right than when she is in the wrong. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_45" href="#div2Ref_45">45</a>: Heller = +half-a-farthing. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_46" href="#div2Ref_46">46</a>: <i>I.e</i>. a sum +which people pay to the exchequer for +permission to leave the country. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_47" href="#div2Ref_47">47</a>: Jews were formerly +obliged to stand with bare feet on +pig’s-skin when they took oath. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_48" href="#div2Ref_48">48</a>: Animals may not +carry anything on the Schabbes; even the +lappets which fowls sometimes have tied to them as marks of +distinction, have to be taken off on that day; and the Jews must get +non-Jews to milk for them; they may not even wipe off dust or moisture +from their persons. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_49" href="#div2Ref_49">49</a>: Prizelius trained +war-horses to stand the beating of the +drums in battle, by strewing oats on the tops of drums, and beating on +the lower side of them while the horses ate the oats as they jumped +about on the top. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_50" href="#div2Ref_50">50</a>: There is no plant +with eleven stamens. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_51" href="#div2Ref_51">51</a>: Two holes in a +hazel-nut show that the beetle which +gnawed away its kernel, in the shape of a little larval worm, has crept +out in its transformed state. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_52" href="#div2Ref_52">52</a>: Allusion to the +fable that the male birds of paradise hatch the eggs on the backs of the +females up in air. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_53" href="#div2Ref_53">53</a>: Particularly on +cold bright winter mornings and evenings. +I (and Siebenkæs for the same reason) have been troubled with this +complaint for more than twenty years, and I have had an attack +of it on this coldest of Christmas eves, just as I was describing +it. It is nothing but a passing paralysis of the nerves of the +lungs—particularly of the <i>nervus vagus</i>—and in course of time (for +you see even twenty years have not been enough), lends to that +pulmonary apoplexy which Leville in Paris, und recently Hohnbaum, have +held to be a new form of the disease, and which, perhaps, after the +precedent of “Miller’s Asthma,” may receive the name of “Siebenkæsian,” +or “Jean Paulish apoplexy.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_54" href="#div2Ref_54">54</a>: Buffon. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_55" href="#div2Ref_55">55</a>: The husband should +always play the lover by rights—and +the lover the husband. It is impossible to describe the amount of +soothing influence which little acts of politeness and innocent +flatteries exercise upon just the very people who usually expect, and +receive, none—wives, sisters, relations—and this even when they quite +understand what this politeness really amounts to. We ought to be +applying this emollient pomade to our rude rough lips all day long, +even if we have only three words to speak,—and we should have a +similar one for our hands, to soften down their actions. I trust that I +shall always keep my resolution never to flatter any woman, not even my +own wife, but I know I shall begin to break it four months and a-half +after my betrothal, and go on breaking it all my life. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_56" href="#div2Ref_56">56</a>: Sander, on “The +Great and Beautiful in Nature.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_57" href="#div2Ref_57">57</a>: The anchor proof +consists in casting the anchor forcibly +down upon a deep hard bottom. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_58" href="#div2Ref_58">58</a>: Servants were <i> +called</i> “knaves” of old, and deserve the +name pretty often at the present day. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_59" href="#div2Ref_59">59</a>: Lack of money and +of health. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_60" href="#div2Ref_60">60</a>: One continued +until fainting supervenes. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_61" href="#div2Ref_61">61</a>: Persons condemned +by the secret tribunals were so +styled. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_62" href="#div2Ref_62">62</a>: The former plant +opens after eight in the morning, the +latter at eleven. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_63" href="#div2Ref_63">63</a>: It is explained in +a long note in the original, that she +<i>could</i> do this even before being married. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_64" href="#div2Ref_64">64</a>: The Silhouette +took its name from the Controller-General +so called. In Paris, an empty, blank physiognomy is called a face “à la +silhouette.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_65" href="#div2Ref_65">65</a>: Which are called +“weavers’ ships” in German. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_66" href="#div2Ref_66">66</a>: In Engelhardszell, +for instance, the Austrian +custom-house officers unbutton paunches to see whether they be fat—or +cloth. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_67" href="#div2Ref_67">67</a>: We have all read +in the newspapers that at the Vienna +balls a paper lantern is carried through the rooms, with the +inscription “Supper ready.” This may be called Vienna lanterning. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_68" href="#div2Ref_68">68</a>: Alas! that the +English word “friend” is such a poor +representative of the German original. Yet I cannot hit upon any +other.—<i>Tr</i>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_69" href="#div2Ref_69">69</a>: Death sends sleep, +Heaven the dream. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_70" href="#div2Ref_70">70</a>: In all this +discussion what we are talking of is not that +<i>practical</i> love of our fellow men, and of our enemies, which expresses +itself in action, and in refraining from revenge (and which must be +easy to every properly constituted person), but that <i>feeling</i> of +misanthropy, or of philanthropy (as the case may be), over which the +moral sense has but little power—of inward love, as distinct from +actions; of secret indignation with sinners and fools. It is easier to +sacrifice one’s self for people than to love them—easier to do good to +our enemies than to forgive them. The longing of love, as well as its +seldomness, have had but one painter—F. Jakobi: we do not need a +second. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_71" href="#div2Ref_71">71</a>: A paper, printed +with symbols, &c., in which the present +for a godchild is wrapped. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_72" href="#div2Ref_72">72</a>: Part which a +player selects as a specimen of his powers. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_73" href="#div2Ref_73">73</a>: A Frenchman vowed +he could not abide the English: “<i>Parce +qu’ils versent du beurre fondu sur leur veau rôti</i>.” +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_74" href="#div2Ref_74">74</a>: ‘Pomp. Mel. de S. +O.’ i. 18. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_75" href="#div2Ref_75">75</a>: Switzerland and +Holland. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_76" href="#div2Ref_76">76</a>: Which was so +altered in appearance after his death by +innumerable wounds, that they masked it as effectually us the iron one +had done. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_77" href="#div2Ref_77">77</a>: There is a kind of +sea-bird which sleeps on the wing, or +floats up and down; and the motion of the sea is often what awakes it. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_78" href="#div2Ref_78">78</a>: This vetch has +some of its flowers and fruit above +ground, but most of them <i>under</i> it; though the latter are +white.—Linnæus. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_79" href="#div2Ref_79">79</a>: At page 163 of the +‘Pocket-Book for Watering Places, and +Visitors to them,’ it is stated that while the ladies are lying bolted +into their baths, young gentlemen sit on the covers and entertain them +while they are under water. Against which arrangement <i>Reason</i> +certainly can urge no valid objection, for the wood of the baths is +quite as thick as silk; and when all is said, Everybody is, if covered +at all, always in some covering <i>inside</i> of which he or she is +altogether <i>devoid</i> of covering—though perhaps <i>Fancy</i>, and +<i>Imagination</i> may urge this objection, that a bed-quilt a quarter of a +yard thick would not be quite so becoming, or close-fitting a +ball-dress as a gauze. If once the Innocence of the imagination be +offended, there is no other to spare; the senses cut neither be +innocent nor the contrary. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_80" href="#div2Ref_80">80</a>: The +white-flowering sort would weep—the red-flowering +sort would storm, as the pale moon indicates rainy weather, and the red +moon high wind. (<i>Pallida luna pluit, rubicunda fiat</i>.) +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_81" href="#div2Ref_81">81</a>: In the +neighbourhood of Comorn (Windisch’s ‘Geography of +Hungary’). Buchan mentions a similar twin-birth in Scotland. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_82" href="#div2Ref_82">82</a>: There was a +superstition that the Headsman’s sword moved, +of itself, before cutting off somebody’s head. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_83" href="#div2Ref_83">83</a>: Who distinguished +himself by <i>painting</i> thistles as much +as Swift by <i>writing</i> them. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_84" href="#div2Ref_84">84</a>: There is nothing +more unreasonable, uncontrollable, and +inexplicable, than this feeling of repugnance to the unclean—this +inconsistent alliance between the will and the coats of the stomach. +Cicero says, “the modest do not willingly use the word ‘modesty’” (a +transcendental form of disgust with the impure)—and those who feel the +repugnance in question deal with it in a similar manner, particularly +as bodily and moral purity are neighbours (which the chaste and cleanly +Swift exemplified in his own person). Even physical loathing (of which +the subject-matter is mental, more than physical), affects the moral +sense more than is supposed. Cross the street with undigested food, or +antimonial wine, in your stomach, and you will feel a stronger distaste +to a score of faces (and for more books when you come home) than at +ordinary times. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_85" href="#div2Ref_85">85</a>: A beggar in +England who keeps a shop full of crutches, +eye-plaster, false legs, &c., which every one who wants to be lame, +blind, &c., must be supplied with. ‘Britt. Annal.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_86" href="#div2Ref_86">86</a>: The Rabbis +maintain that Cain killed his brother because +the latter disagreed with him when he (Cain) denied the immortality of +the soul. So that the first murder was an <i>auto-da-fe</i>, and the first +war a religious one. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_87" href="#div2Ref_87">87</a>: According to de +Luc, in the third volume of his ‘Little +Journeys for Amateur Travellers.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_88" href="#div2Ref_88">88</a>: That is, to +himself. He wishes his inheritance to be paid +to himself, and not to his wife, because she might have married a rich +husband in the interval; besides, he would have less trouble in knowing +whether or not the Heimlicher did what he told him, and could, if +necessary, carry out the threat which he is about to make. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_89" href="#div2Ref_89">89</a>: Here follow, in +the original, puns on the (German) +medical names of the four stomachs of the <i>Ruminantia</i>, for which I am +unequal to finding equivalents.—<span class="sc">Trans</span>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_90" href="#div2Ref_90">90</a>: Leibgeber means, +at once, the second life (in which he +does not believe), and Firmian’s continuation of his <i>present</i> life in +Vaduz. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_91" href="#div2Ref_91">91</a>: Plin. H. N., viii +30. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_92" href="#div2Ref_92">92</a>: Which, like a +greater Psyche, makes its nest in skulls. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_93" href="#div2Ref_93">93</a>: King’s hearts are +enshrined in golden cases. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_94" href="#div2Ref_94">94</a>: The actor (among +the Romans) who mimicked the deceased in +all his gestures and movements at his funeral. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_95" href="#div2Ref_95">95</a>: People who had +been taken to be dead, and honoured with a +funeral, had to go through these ceremonies.—<span class="sc">Potter</span>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_96" href="#div2Ref_96">96</a>: Augustin, +Commentar. ad Johann. xxi. 23. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_97" href="#div2Ref_97">97</a>: This name, or that +of <i>Tumulus Honorarius</i>, was given to +the <i>empty</i> monument which friends erected to a dead person whose body +was not to be found. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_98" href="#div2Ref_98">98</a>: Alexand. ab Alex. +iii. 7. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_99" href="#div2Ref_99">99</a>: There is a pun +here in the original, where this +expression means also “to hiss off” (<i>e.g</i>. an actor from the +stage).—<span class="sc">Trans</span>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_100" href="#div2Ref_100">100</a>: I speak of +1796. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_101" href="#div2Ref_101">101</a>: Whatever +Pythagoras wrote with bean-juice on a certain +mirror could be read on the moon.—‘Call. Rhodogin,’ ix. 13. When +Charles V. and Francis I. were fighting near Milan, everything that +happened by day at Milan could be read at night on the moon in Paris by +means of a mirror of this sort.—‘Agrippa de Occ. Philos.’ ii. 6. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_102" href="#div2Ref_102">102</a>: A long cloud, +with branch-like streaks, which bodes a +storm. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_103" href="#div2Ref_103">103</a>: There is a +superstition that when two children kiss +without being able to speak, one of them must die. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_104" href="#div2Ref_104">104</a>: “Therefore I +foresee that Leibgeber’s Pastoral Letters +in these ‘Flower Pieces’ will, for most of my readers, be insufferable +letters of denunciation or defiance. Most Germans do understand a +joke—it cannot be denied of them—but they do not all understand +<i>badinage</i>—and few understand humour—least of all the Leibgeber sort. +Therefore, at first—because it is easier to alter a book than a +public—I thought of falsifying all his letters, and substituting +pleasanter-flavoured ones. However it can always be arranged that, in +the second edition, the falsified letters shall be inserted in the body +of the work, and the genuine ones given at the end as an Appendix.” +</p> + +<p class="hang2">This has not been found necessary. Heavens! how can first +editions make +such mistakes, and misunderstand such a number of readers—to whom +second editions afterwards offer the warmest and sincerest apologies. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_105" href="#div2Ref_105">105</a>: Plin. H. N. +vii. 48. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_106" href="#div2Ref_106">106</a>: She refers to +the widow’s pension. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_107" href="#div2Ref_107">107</a>: Because it was +supposed to be in English verse.—<span class="sc">Trans</span>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_108" href="#div2Ref_108">108</a>: In the +ranunculus, brown wort, the lower part of the +stalk sinks deeper into the ground every year, to replace the root as +it rots away. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_109" href="#div2Ref_109">109</a>: In enthusiasm, +the converse order of things prevails. To +learn to know what your firmly established principles of morality are, +with more certainty than you can from your resolves and actions, you +have only to notice the joy or the sorrow which a moral claim, a piece +of news, a disappointment, calls up in you with lightning speed, but +which disappears again at once under the influence of reflection and +self-control. What great, rotting pieces of the old Adam one finds +about one still, now and then! +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_110" href="#div2Ref_110">110</a>: The wife of +Pinarius, under the government of Tarquinius +Superbus, was the first woman to quarrel with her mother-in-law (Plut. +in Numa). German history will, perhaps, some day make honourable +mention of the first married woman who did <i>not</i> quarrel with her +mother-in-law; at least a German Plutarch should set about hunting her +out. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_111" href="#div2Ref_111">111</a>: Allusion to a +certain waterfall which dashes from its +rock with a sweep so wide that one can walk under it, and thus be +protected front rain.—‘<i>An Artist’s Journey in the Alps</i>.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_112" href="#div2Ref_112">112</a>: A bugbear, nine +feet high, made of bark and straw, with +which the Mandingoes terrify and better their wives. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_113" href="#div2Ref_113">113</a>: Walter’s +‘Physiology.’ +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_114" href="#div2Ref_114">114</a>: There are one +thousand millions of us crawling on this +sphere. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_115" href="#div2Ref_115">115</a>: <i>Vanessa +Antiopa</i> gets this name in Germany.—<span class="sc">Trans</span>. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_116" href="#div2Ref_116">116</a>: The purer +precious stones are colder and heavier than +the less perfect. +</p> + +<p class="hang1"><a name="div2_117" href="#div2Ref_117">117</a>: Waxen angels +used to be put into the grave with the +dead. +</p> + +<h3>THE END.</h3> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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