BOOK IV.
CHAPTER XV.ROSA VON MEYERN—TONE-ECHOES AND AFTER BREEZES FROM THE LOVELIEST OF ALL NIGHTS—LETTERS OF NATHALIE AND FIRMIAN—TABLE-TALK BY LEIBGEBER.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), theywould notfold 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.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 likeus! 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;—now, 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 littlearpeggio-ingup and down.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 hishandas 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 gradualdiminuendo. 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 theirheart(namely the word) on their tongues, like a kind ofglobus hystericus. He said, “It is the bullet-screw of their real hearts,—the button on their fanfoil; and, tome, it is a poisonbolus, a pitch-ball for the Bel of Babel.”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:instanter,instantius,instantissime, 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. IcanNOT. Butyoucan 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.”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 alivinghedge, 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;[78]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 hehad. 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 besobeloved, for the first time by a woman as an hundred dreams and poets had pictured to him that menmightbe 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 himsucha parting kiss, like a sun into all his coming life, to light and warm it through and through for ever!Thiswas 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, butthiswas 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 thatasa departed spirit—nay, while yet in this life, of a truth, forhim, 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, forhim) 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.With all his efforts, he could not manage to say more to Leibgeber than, “She must have been very, very fond ofyou, this rare, exceptional soul—for it is only to my resemblance to you that I can ascribe her heavenly kindness tome—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?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 flowergoddess, rather than the flowers, with his botanical glasses (to wit, his eyes). But no goddess appeared. Alas! our poor wounded Nathalie hadso manyreasons 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.A few days after this, the Venner Rosa von Meyern honoured the company at thetable d’hôtein the ‘Sun’ withhis.... 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 exactlywhichof 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 andcoolly liea 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.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 ofmarum verum; which is why both are surrounded withmetallicguards 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.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.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!”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?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.”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.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?”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.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—yecannot 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, everybody—even the human body, is, from the soul’s point of view, merely the sacredreliquiæof an invisible spirit; and not only the letter, which you kiss, but the hand which wrote it, too, is, like the lips, whose kissyou think, assures you—(but it is a deceptive assurance)—of theclosenessof your union, yourflowingorfusinginto one, only the sacred outward and visible sign of a something higher and dearer; and these deceptions differ only in their sweetness.Leibgeber came in, opened the letter, and read it aloud:“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 nowherwishes to combat (as I had myownbefore) 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 aroundallthe 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.Yourfriend is with you still, no doubt. Press him warmly to your heart, and tell him, all thatyourswishes, andgiveshim, minewisheshim; and never will he, or you, whom he loves, be forgotten by me. Always“YourNathalie.”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 hedoesuse his for fly-flappers.”“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.”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.“Ibid you farewell, too! ButIcannot 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 astrangefavour. 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.Youcan 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 onthatnight, for the last time, this is the last time I shall write to you.“But Eternity remains for thee and me!“F. S.”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, andMaître des Requêtes, 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, “Imustsay no! CouldIlive long, ifyouwere 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.”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 toundress 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, formysake, 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, whereasIseldom 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,whatlast word am I to carry to mygood,dearbeloved 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 letthisbe, also. But you are giving meanothergreat 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.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.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 tohis. 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 pleasesus, is to see her shrinking from everybody else, growing hard and frozen to them on our account, handingthemnothing 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, wheneverhehas 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.Nathalie had acceded to the strange proposal for many reasons; just because itwasa 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 theappearanceof selfishness or not. And, lastly, she cared less about appearances in general, and the conclusions people drew from them than, perhaps, a young ladyshouldcare.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 hemustpass 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 headmemento mori, 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—paperlit-de-paradeandlit-de-justice—would have been tohima 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 sundryCommissaires de Justiceat thetable d’hôteat 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 ingeneral, 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 arobe de chambreand 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.“Every man is a born pedant. There are very few who are hung in chainsafterthey are dead: but almost every oneishung, in most accursed chains,beforedeath; 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)wind. 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 mysticcorpusitself, 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 isinsidethat 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 apays coutumier. If he is not speaking the truth, he begs that he may be contradicted without the slightest hesitation.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, whoserôlehe 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’sownhead and shoulders, and when the latter handed him his, Leibgeber returned the compliment, saying “al Pari!” thus paying him in his own coin. This stranger made airs of various kinds, as well as silhouettes, but succeeded best with thephlogisticsort, 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.“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 ofeverykind, with great advantage, at all events, upon the minuter branches. Could notone, 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;e. g., 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—thekraken, the devil (whomay, 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) oneverything, 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 (oftalk, 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; alearnedworld, 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 upontheirlegs. 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,then. 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 thepoint de vue, in military ‘evolutions,’ for which the adjutant is generally told off).”Here he suddenly jumped up, and cried, “I wish to Heaven I could go to Bruckenau;[79]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,à laSt. 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 wereIto havemyself cooped into anetui, 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.”
ROSA VON MEYERN—TONE-ECHOES AND AFTER BREEZES FROM THE LOVELIEST OF ALL NIGHTS—LETTERS OF NATHALIE AND FIRMIAN—TABLE-TALK BY LEIBGEBER.
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), theywould notfold 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.
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 likeus! 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;—now, 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 littlearpeggio-ingup and down.
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 hishandas 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 gradualdiminuendo. 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 theirheart(namely the word) on their tongues, like a kind ofglobus hystericus. He said, “It is the bullet-screw of their real hearts,—the button on their fanfoil; and, tome, it is a poisonbolus, a pitch-ball for the Bel of Babel.”
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:instanter,instantius,instantissime, 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. IcanNOT. Butyoucan 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.”
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 alivinghedge, 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;[78]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 hehad. 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 besobeloved, for the first time by a woman as an hundred dreams and poets had pictured to him that menmightbe 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 himsucha parting kiss, like a sun into all his coming life, to light and warm it through and through for ever!Thiswas 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, butthiswas 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 thatasa departed spirit—nay, while yet in this life, of a truth, forhim, 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, forhim) 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.
With all his efforts, he could not manage to say more to Leibgeber than, “She must have been very, very fond ofyou, this rare, exceptional soul—for it is only to my resemblance to you that I can ascribe her heavenly kindness tome—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?
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 flowergoddess, rather than the flowers, with his botanical glasses (to wit, his eyes). But no goddess appeared. Alas! our poor wounded Nathalie hadso manyreasons 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.
A few days after this, the Venner Rosa von Meyern honoured the company at thetable d’hôtein the ‘Sun’ withhis.... 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 exactlywhichof 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 andcoolly liea 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.
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 ofmarum verum; which is why both are surrounded withmetallicguards 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.
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.
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!”
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?
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.”
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.
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?”
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.
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—yecannot 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, everybody—even the human body, is, from the soul’s point of view, merely the sacredreliquiæof an invisible spirit; and not only the letter, which you kiss, but the hand which wrote it, too, is, like the lips, whose kissyou think, assures you—(but it is a deceptive assurance)—of theclosenessof your union, yourflowingorfusinginto one, only the sacred outward and visible sign of a something higher and dearer; and these deceptions differ only in their sweetness.
Leibgeber came in, opened the letter, and read it aloud:
“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 nowherwishes to combat (as I had myownbefore) 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 aroundallthe 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.Yourfriend is with you still, no doubt. Press him warmly to your heart, and tell him, all thatyourswishes, andgiveshim, minewisheshim; and never will he, or you, whom he loves, be forgotten by me. Always
“YourNathalie.”
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 hedoesuse his for fly-flappers.”
“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.”
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.
“Ibid you farewell, too! ButIcannot 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 astrangefavour. 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.Youcan 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 onthatnight, for the last time, this is the last time I shall write to you.
“But Eternity remains for thee and me!
“F. S.”
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, andMaître des Requêtes, 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, “Imustsay no! CouldIlive long, ifyouwere 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.”
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 toundress 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, formysake, 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, whereasIseldom 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,whatlast word am I to carry to mygood,dearbeloved 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 letthisbe, also. But you are giving meanothergreat 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.
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.
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 tohis. 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 pleasesus, is to see her shrinking from everybody else, growing hard and frozen to them on our account, handingthemnothing 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, wheneverhehas 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.
Nathalie had acceded to the strange proposal for many reasons; just because itwasa 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 theappearanceof selfishness or not. And, lastly, she cared less about appearances in general, and the conclusions people drew from them than, perhaps, a young ladyshouldcare.
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 hemustpass 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 headmemento mori, 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—paperlit-de-paradeandlit-de-justice—would have been tohima 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 sundryCommissaires de Justiceat thetable d’hôteat 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 ingeneral, 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 arobe de chambreand 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.
“Every man is a born pedant. There are very few who are hung in chainsafterthey are dead: but almost every oneishung, in most accursed chains,beforedeath; 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)wind. 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 mysticcorpusitself, 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 isinsidethat 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 apays coutumier. If he is not speaking the truth, he begs that he may be contradicted without the slightest hesitation.
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, whoserôlehe 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’sownhead and shoulders, and when the latter handed him his, Leibgeber returned the compliment, saying “al Pari!” thus paying him in his own coin. This stranger made airs of various kinds, as well as silhouettes, but succeeded best with thephlogisticsort, 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.
“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 ofeverykind, with great advantage, at all events, upon the minuter branches. Could notone, 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;e. g., 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—thekraken, the devil (whomay, 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) oneverything, 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 (oftalk, 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; alearnedworld, 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 upontheirlegs. 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,then. 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 thepoint de vue, in military ‘evolutions,’ for which the adjutant is generally told off).”
Here he suddenly jumped up, and cried, “I wish to Heaven I could go to Bruckenau;[79]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,à laSt. 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 wereIto havemyself cooped into anetui, 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.”