CHAPTER X.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.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 thecommode, 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 “assignat” 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.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 addhiswishes 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.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 thestigmataof 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.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 moveshimselfmore 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.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?”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.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.”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.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.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 thinkTHEY WEREof 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 latterdohowl 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.[56]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.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, whichhiswas 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. OnecanWRITEa good deal of one’s mind, but one can’tstitchvery much off it. And when I consider what swimming-belts and cork-jackets for the deepest floodsIam prepared with, in the shape of the self-contemplation of the Emperor Antoninus and in Arrianus Epictetus, of neither of whomsheknows even the binding, let alone the name (to say nothing of my astronomy and psychology); and what splendid hands at the fire engine-pumpstheyare to me when I blaze up in a conflagration of anger as I did just now, whileshehas to letheranger 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 hadreceiveda 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.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 inMosheh, and in Jesos Christos, Petros and Paulos, and, in fact,os’dall 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, theu’s in it are sometimes a good deal likeo’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.”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’tquiteso 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 wedospin and draw it out ofourselves, 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.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.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.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 themoneycould 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.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 thebeneficium appellationis(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.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.He appealed to the Supreme Court and ordered another instrument to be drawn up in Leipzig.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.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 areen rapportwith 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 todumb-bellsby way of helping out their meaning, using for that purpose plates, keys, and doors.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 satiricill-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.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 thetonesin which things were capable of being said, he gave her to understand that for the future he would speak to her only in writing.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 amauvais sujet, 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 notspeakto 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 allhisquestions 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 asBureau d’Intelligenceto 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.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 hespokein 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 littlecarmenwhich bordered this dish, and which ran as follows:—“Peace feeds, but strifeConsumes our life.”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.“Well, and what said Lenette to all this?” we inquired above. Not a word, I answer. She wasn’t going to lethissulks and silence diminishhersin 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.”“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 onedoesconsume about that quantity of sustenance in the course of the year; but did anybody in that room fancy such a thing was possible?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 (whichhadthe 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.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.On the 11th of February, Firmian sought relief.On the 11th of February, Euphrosyne’s day, 1767, Lenette was born.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 singleenvoyés, as theretofore was the usage. However, nothing came of all this.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.“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 tohimto 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 (shecould hearhis, by-the-by, in church, of course), would once more stir the chords of his being.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 hisintentionin 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 hewouldhave his own way in that condition of life, comes, in the long run, to let his wife havehers. 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 doesnotbreak 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 theunionof souls; for though at times an unseen infinite Arm seems suddenly to press us upon some new heart, yet we have always longknownthis 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[57]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.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 youhavehurt 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, “Forgivethoume 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’sthisterrible 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.”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 (whichIhave 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.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—acymbale d’amour—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.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; butat lengththe 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.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.Thus did the quick, transient, quiveringFlower-piecesof 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.”
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.
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 thecommode, 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 “assignat” 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.
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 addhiswishes 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.
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 thestigmataof 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.
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 moveshimselfmore 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.
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?”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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 thinkTHEY WEREof 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 latterdohowl 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.[56]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.
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, whichhiswas 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. OnecanWRITEa good deal of one’s mind, but one can’tstitchvery much off it. And when I consider what swimming-belts and cork-jackets for the deepest floodsIam prepared with, in the shape of the self-contemplation of the Emperor Antoninus and in Arrianus Epictetus, of neither of whomsheknows even the binding, let alone the name (to say nothing of my astronomy and psychology); and what splendid hands at the fire engine-pumpstheyare to me when I blaze up in a conflagration of anger as I did just now, whileshehas to letheranger 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 hadreceiveda 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.
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 inMosheh, and in Jesos Christos, Petros and Paulos, and, in fact,os’dall 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, theu’s in it are sometimes a good deal likeo’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.”
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’tquiteso 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 wedospin and draw it out ofourselves, 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.
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.
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.
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 themoneycould 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.
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 thebeneficium appellationis(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.
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.
He appealed to the Supreme Court and ordered another instrument to be drawn up in Leipzig.
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.
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 areen rapportwith 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 todumb-bellsby way of helping out their meaning, using for that purpose plates, keys, and doors.
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 satiricill-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.
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 thetonesin which things were capable of being said, he gave her to understand that for the future he would speak to her only in writing.
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 amauvais sujet, 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 notspeakto 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 allhisquestions 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 asBureau d’Intelligenceto 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.
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 hespokein 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 littlecarmenwhich bordered this dish, and which ran as follows:—
“Peace feeds, but strifeConsumes our life.”
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.
“Well, and what said Lenette to all this?” we inquired above. Not a word, I answer. She wasn’t going to lethissulks and silence diminishhersin 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.”
“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 onedoesconsume about that quantity of sustenance in the course of the year; but did anybody in that room fancy such a thing was possible?
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 (whichhadthe 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.
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.
On the 11th of February, Firmian sought relief.
On the 11th of February, Euphrosyne’s day, 1767, Lenette was born.
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 singleenvoyés, as theretofore was the usage. However, nothing came of all this.
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.
“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 tohimto 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 (shecould hearhis, by-the-by, in church, of course), would once more stir the chords of his being.
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 hisintentionin 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 hewouldhave his own way in that condition of life, comes, in the long run, to let his wife havehers. 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 doesnotbreak 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 theunionof souls; for though at times an unseen infinite Arm seems suddenly to press us upon some new heart, yet we have always longknownthis 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[57]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.
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 youhavehurt 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, “Forgivethoume 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’sthisterrible 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.”
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 (whichIhave 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.
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—acymbale d’amour—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.
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; butat lengththe 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.
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.
Thus did the quick, transient, quiveringFlower-piecesof 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.”