CHAPTER XXIV.NEWS FROM KUHSCHNAPPEL—WOMAN’S ANTICLIMAX—OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL.It is a matter which often quite puts me beyond myself that, although wedo, in the end, duly accept and honour the bills which Virtue draws upon us, we onlypaythem after such a vast number of days of grace and double-usances—although neither the devil nor Constantinople will hear of either the one or the other. Firmian urged no further pleas of objection, except for delay. He merelypostponedhis confession, thinking that as Apollo is the best consoler (Paraclete) of man, and as Nathalie had shown the basilisk of sorrow its own image in the mirror of poetry, the sight ofitselfwould be sufficient to kill it, Thus it is that all virtuous motions in us are weakened by the friction of time and of our inclinations.One single letter, however, sent all the scenery of his theatre into confusion again. It came from Schulrath Stiefel:—“Honoured Sir,—You doubtless remember more than too well the testamentary instruction which our mutual friend, the late lamented Poor’s Advocate, Siebenkæs, left behind him, to the effect that Herr von Blaise should make payment of the trust-funds in his hands—and, indeed (as you are aware), to your respected self in order that you, might remit it to the widow—which failing, it was the testator’s avowed intention to appear as a ghost. Be this as it may, thus much is matter of notoriety in this town and neighbourhood, that, for some weeks past, a ghost, in the likeness of our lamented friend, has pursued the Herr Heimlicher everywhere, who has, in consequence, become so ill and bedridden, that he has taken the Holy Sacrament, and made up his mind to pay over the above-mentioned moneys in good earnest. I now beg to inquire of you whether you would wish to receive them in the first instance, or whether (as would be almost more natural) they shall be paid at once to the widow. I have yet to mention that—in accordance with the desire of the testator—I sometime since married the former Mrs. Siebenkæs, and that I expect very soon to be the happiest of fathers. She is a most admirable wife and housekeeper. She is by no means a Thalæa,[110]and would lay down her life for her husband as gladly as he would lay down his for her; and I often have nothing left to desire, but that my predecessor, her good, never-to-be-forgotten first husband Siebenkæs (whohadhis little whims and eccentricities at times), could be a spectator of the happiness in which his beloved Lenette is now bathed. She weeps for him every Sunday as she goes through the churchyard, but at the same time she confesses that she is happier now than in former times. It grieves me much that it is only now that I have learnt, from my wife, in what miserable circumstances the dear departed found himself, as regarded his purse. How eagerly, had I been aware of this, I should have taken him and his wife by the arms, and assisted them as becomes a Christian! If the deceased, whonowpossesses more than any, or all, of us, can, in his glory, look down upon us, I am sure he will forgive me. I would respectfully beg for an early reply to this letter. One cause of the restitution of the trust-funds may also be, that the Heimlicher (who is an honest enough man upon the whole) is now no longer influenced by Herr von Meyern. They have completely fallen out, as all the town knows, and the latter has broken off engagements with five ladies in Bayreuth, and is about to enter into the state of holy matrimony with a native of Kuhschnappel.“My wife is as bitter against him as Christian love permits, and says that when she meets him she feels like a hunter who encounters an old woman in his path of a morning; for he was the cause of much needless vexation between her and her husband, and she often tells me with pleasure how cleverly you, esteemed Mr. Inspector, often set this dangerous fellow down, and kept him in his place. However, he does not dare to set foot inmyhouse. I defer, for the present, a more detailed request—as to whether you would not feel inclined to fill our departed friend’s vacant place as Collaborateur in the ‘GOD’S Messenger of German Programmes,’ which (I may say without undue boasting) is taken in, and looked upon with approval in Gymnasia and Lycæa, from Swabia as far as Nürnberg, Bayreuth, and Hof. There is rather a superfluity than a lack of miserable Programme-scribblers; and (let me say it without flattery)youare the very man to wield the satiric scourge over the heads of these frog-spawn in the Castalian springs, as few otherscould. But of this more on another occasion. My wife desires to addhermost cordial remembrances to her departed husband’s highly-esteemed friend; and, hoping for a speedy answer,“I remain, your most obedient humble servant,“S. R. Stiefel, Schulrath.”The human heart is shielded bygreatsorrows from the impact ofsmallones—by the waterfall from the rain.[111]Firmian forgot everything in remembering, suffering, and crying out to himself, “Thus I have lost thee for ever, wholly. Oh!thouwert good always, it wasIwho was not. Be happier than thy solitary friend whom thou mournest justly every Sunday.” He now cast all the blame of his bygone matrimonial lawsuits upon his own satirical whimsies, and ascribed the failure of his crop of happiness to his own ungenial climate.But in this he was doing himself greater injustice than he had formerly done Lenette. I mean to make the world a present of my thoughts on this subject, on the spot. Love is the Perihelion of the fair sex; nay, it is the transit of every one of those Venuses over the sun of the ideal world. At the epoch of this “higher style” of their souls, they loveeverythingthatwelove, even the sciences, and the wholebestworld within the breast—and they despise whatwedespise, even clothes and news. In this spring of theirs these nightingales go on singing until the summer solstice; the wedding-day is their longest day. Then the devil runs away with—not exactly everything, but something every day. The bast-band of wedlock binds the poetic wings, and the bridal-bed is (for the imagination, the phantasy), an Engelsburg, and prison-cell, with bread and water. During the honeymoon I have often followed these poor birds of paradise, or peacocks of Psyche, and in this moulting-season of theirs picked up the glorious wing and tail-feathers which they have dropped; and then, when a husband has fancied he has married a naked crow, I have held out the bunch of feathers to him. Why is this? For this reason: marriage overlays the poetical world with the rind of the actual; as (according to Descartes) our earthly sphere is a sun covered over with a dirty crust, or bark. The hands of everyday labour are unwieldy, hard, and full of indurations, and find much difficulty in going on holding, or drawing the delicate threads of the woof of the ideal. Hence it is that among the upper classes (where, instead of work-roomsthere are only little work-baskets, and where the little spinning-wheels are turned on the lap with the finger, and where love still endures after marriage—often even for the husband) the wedding-ring is not so often, as among the lower orders, a Gyges-ring, which renders books and the arts of music, poetry, painting, and dancing—invisible. Upon high places plants of all sorts, and particularly female plants, have more vigour and aroma. A woman has not, as a man has, the power of protecting the outer side of her inner air-and-magic-castles against rough weather. What then is she to hold to? Her husband. He ought always to stand beside the liquid silver of the female spirit with a spoon, and keep skimming off the scum which gathers on it, that the silver-glittering sheen of the ideal may always keep bright and shining. But then there are two sorts of husbands—Arcadians, or lyric-poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau, when their hair is grey—and these are not to be controlled or comforted when they can no longer see any gold on the feminine anthology (bound with gilt edges) because they have turned the leaves of the little book over one by one, (as is the case with all gilt-edged books). Secondly, there are shepherd-hinds and sheep-smearers, I mean master-singers by profession, men-of-business, who thank God when theenchantressturns, at last, like other witches, into a grumblinghouse-cat, keeping down the vermin.Nobody has to suffer more anxiety and alarm, combined with tedium and ennui (and therefore I intend some day to awaken the pity of my readers for this very condition, in a comic biography) than a portly, energetic, pushing, pompous, ponderousBassoof a “business-man,” who finds himself (like the elephants in Rome of old) constrained to dance on the slack-rope of love; and whose deportment and play of feature, in the circumstances,Ithink more like those of a marmot than anything else, when the warmth of a room has awakened him from his winter’s sleep, and he finds he can’t get properly into the knack of moving. It is only with widows (who wish less to be loved than to be married) that a weighty office-holder of this sort can begin his romance at the place where all the novel-writers leave theirs off—namely, at the altar-steps. A man, built after this simplest of styles, would find a great weight lifted from his heart if anybody would only love his shepherdessforhim till such time as he should have nothing to do but go and be married; and no one would have greater pleasure in taking up this burden, or cross, from them than myself. I have often thought of announcing in the public newspapers (except that I was afraid it would be looked upon as a joke) that I was prepared to swear Platonic, eternal love to any number of endurable girls (whom men of business might not even havetimeto love), and make them all the necessary love-declarations as plenipotentiary of the bridegroom-elect—in a word, to lead them on my arm, assubstitutus sine spe succedendi, orcavalier de société, athwart the whole of the unlevel land of love, till, on the frontier, I should hand over my charge, duly prepared, to the bridegroom; which would be lovemaking, rather than marrying, by ambassador. If, according to thissystema assistantiæ, there should be any one who would care to employ the writer even during the honeymoon (when a certain amount of love may still be expected to crop up), he must take care to establish all the necessary conditions in good time, beforehand.In Siebenkæs’s Lenette (from no fault of his) the ideal isle of the blest had sunk away, miles deep, in an instant, at the very marriage altar. The husband could in nowise either help or hinder this. On the whole, dear Mr. Education-Counsellor Campe, you really should not strike so hard upon your writing-desk with your school birch-rod whenever a solitary she-frog croaks out something or other out of the nearest marsh, which is capable of being sent to an almanack. Ah me! don’t tear away from the good creatures (whodoput the loveliest dreams, all full of fantasy-flowers, into this empty life of ours) the terribly short dream of a delicate, sentimental love. They will be awakened to reality only too soon without that, and neither you nor I will be able to put them to sleep again, let us write as much as we choose.Siebenkæs wrote off that day a brief and hurried reply to the Schulrath, saying “he was extremely glad that he had stood to the will, and the laws, and enclosed him a power of attorney to enable him to draw the money. Only he entreated him, as a great scholar and man of letters (one of a class who of ten, perhaps, suppose they understand matters of business better than they really do), to put the whole affair into a lawyer’s hands to be transacted, inasmuch asJusis of little use without jurists—nay, often not of very much evenwiththem. Toreview‘Programmes’ he had no time, let alone toreadthem; and he sent his kind regards to his wife.”It is not displeasing to me that (as I perceive) my readers have all discovered of themselves that the ghost, or supernatural bow-wow, and mumbo-jumbo,[112]who had got the trust money out of the Heimlicher’s clutches more effectually than the wholeposse-comitatusof the Court of Exchequer, was none other than Heinrich Leibgeber, who had availed himself of his resemblance to the departed Siebenkæs to play the part ofRevenant. I need not, therefore, tell the reader what he knows already.When one has at last managed to creep up a steep Alp with the hands of a tree-frog, one very often finds that, what one looks down at from the summit is a fresh yawning abyss. Firmian saw a new one under his feet; he had to abandon the resolution he had taken. I mean, he did not now dare to say a word to Nathalie about his resurrection from the charnel-house—his immortality after death. Alas! the happiness of his Lenette, who (in the utmost innocence) had two husbands, would then be hanging on the tip of a tongue. The blame would be his, the misery Lenette’s. No, no (he said); Time will, by slow degrees, lay dust upon my pale image in Nathalie’s kind heart, and draw the colours out of it.In brief, he kept silence. The proud Nathalie kept silence also. In this terrible position of matters, face to face with the hard, eternalknotof the drama, he passed his anxious hours upon the stage. The raven-flight of cares and sorrows cast their flitting shadows over every charm and beauty of the spring, and poisonous dreams fell upon his sleep like mildew. Every dream-night cut the falling planetary-knot, and his heart along with it. How would Fate rescue and recover him from this poison-vapour, this azote-gas, of anguish and anxiety? How would it cure the finger-worm in his ring finger? By taking his arm off. One evening, to wit, shortly before bedtime, the Count was as confidential with him as a man of the world can ever be. He had something very pleasant to tell him, he said; only he must be allowed to say something beforehand, by way of a preface or introduction. It struck him—he went on to say, that, now that his Inspector had entered upon his duties, he was no longer quite so gay and full of humour as he had found him to be of old, but rather (if he might speak openly) downcast at times, and over-sentimental. Yet he had formerly said himself (but this was theotherLeibgeber) that he would rather hear a man swear at a mischance than lament over it; and that one might have his feet sticking in the winter, and his nose in the spring, and smell a flower, though in the midst of snow. “I forgive it, at once, for perhaps I guess the reason of it,” he added. But his forgiveness was really not quite genuine. For, like all the great, to him strength of feeling, even of a loving sort—but still more, of a sorrowful—was an annoyance; and a strong handclasp of friendship was almost as bad as a crunch on the toes. He demanded of pain that it should pass before him with a smile—of wickedness and evil, that they should pass him by laughing, or, at all events, laughedat—as, indeed, the coldest men of the world are like the physical man, whose highest temperature is about the region of the diaphragm.[113]Consequently, the previous Leibgeber—that storm-windy, but, at the same time, serene blue sky—naturally suited the Count better than this so-called Leibgeber. But how differently from us whoreadthis little reproach quietly, did Siebenkæs listen to it! Thesesolar eclipsesof his Leibgeber (which really were not even so much assun spotsbelonging tohim, but merelyapparentshadows cast on him by Siebenkæs, by reason of the position he chanced to occupy) the latter reproached himself with as so many deadly sins against his friend, which he felt it absolutely necessary to confess and do penance for.As the Count now went on to say, “This melancholy of yours can scarcely be caused altogether by grief at the loss of your friend Siebenkæs, because since his death you have never spoken to me of him with such warmth as when he was alive. Pardon me this frankness,”—a fresh pang at this shadowing of Leibgeber cut across his brow, and it was with difficulty that he could allow his patron to finish his explanation. “But this is not a shortcoming inmyeyes, dear Leibgeber: on the contrary, it is an excellence. We ought not to go on eternally mourning for the dead; if we grieve at all, it should be for the living. And even the latter species of grief may come to an end with you next week, for then I expect my daughter, and” (he spoke here very deliberately) “her friend Nathalie with her. They have meten route.” Siebenkæs sprang hastily up, stood speechless and motionless, held his hand before his eyes, not to hide them, but to keep the light out of them, so that he might look through, and follow the course of, the cloud-masses of thought which were piled one over another and rolling in all directions, ere he should give his answer.But the Count—misconstruing him (as Leibgeber) in all points, and ascribing his sentimental metamorphosis to Nathalie’s account, and the fact of his being deprived of her—begged him merely to hear him out before speaking, and to accept his assurance that he would be delighted to do everything in his power to retain his daughter’s lovely friend always in the neighbourhood. Heavens! what thousandfold entanglement the Count made of a matter so wholly simple!Here Siebenkæs, stormed at from fresh points of the compass, had to beg for a moment to think—for there were nowthreesouls at stake—but he had scarcely taken one or two hasty steps across the room, when he stood firm again, and said to the Count, and to himself, “Yes, I shall do what is right.” Then he begged the Count to give his word of honour that he would keep inviolate a secret which he would confide to him, and which neither related to, nor would injure, himself or his daughter in the slightest degree. “In that case why should I not?” answered the Count, to whom the discovery of a secret was as the clearing away of a thick woodland before a fine view.Then Firmian opened his heart, his life, and everything, like a stream let loose and dashing into a new channel, not yet to be measured with a glance. The Count several times detained him by fresh misunderstandings, because he had only preassumed, out of his own imagination, a love on Nathalie’s part for the real Leibgeber, and had never heard from any one of her real love for Siebenkæs.And now the astonished Count, in his turn, astonished the Advocate; and, of all the many faces which in such a case he might have put on—faces offended, angry, startled, embarrassed, delighted, cold—he only showed the Inspector an exceedingly contented one. It only particularly pleased him, he said, that hehadobserved so many little matters which rather vexed him, and that in certain points he hadnotthought over-highly of Leibgeber; but what delighted him most was his good fortune at possessing, in this manner, adoubleLeibgeber, and the knowledge that the absent one was not sorrowing for a dead friend.Let no one be surprised at the Count’s maintaining his good-humour and serenity who has seen a bright order-star sparkle on an aged, and extinguished, breast. When our old man of the world beheld the little shuttle of this chain of friends flying to and fro between love and sacrifice on either side; when he held in his hand the bright Raphael-tapestry of friendship which it wove, and looked at it closely, there came to him the enjoyment ofsomething new, for the first time for many years. So that, up to this point, he had been sitting in his front box before a living comic-historical drama, of which he himself unravelled the plot, and which could be performed all over again in his head at any given moment. Moreover, his Inspector had become a new being for him, full of fresh entertainment, inasmuch as he had gone off the stage, changed his dress and re-entered as the pseudo-deceased Siebenkæs; and could, in the future, tell him as much as he pleased of the narrator. In this way both the friends had become flatteringly-precious to him, by reason of the dependent interest in him with which they had interwoven the bond which bound their souls.He who has tasted the bliss of sticking to the truth can understand the new delight with which Siebenkæs could now pour himself out unrestrained concerning everything—himself and Henry and Nathalie—inasmuch as it was not till now that he felt the full weight of the burden he had got relieved of—that of working the light, jest-falsehood of a moment into a yearly comedy, in 365 acts. With what ease he explained to the Count that, before Nathalie’s arrival (whom he could neither undeceive, nor go on deceiving), he must fly, and that straight to Kuhschnappel. As the Count listened, he told him all the reasons urging him to go; longing to see his tombstone, and unhallowed grave, so as to do penitence and expiation; longing to see Lenette, unseen, from afar, perhaps her child near; longing to hear from eye-witnesses a minute account of her happy married life with Stiefel (for Stiefel’s letter had wafted the flower ashes of bygone days into his eyes, and opened the leaves of the sleeping-flower of his conjugal love); longing to wander, romantically (erect now, and with his burden off), about the scenes of his old oppressed life; longing to hear, in the market-town, something of his Leibgeber, who had been there so recently; longing to celebrate August, the month of his death, in solitude—the month when it had been with him as with the vine, whose leaves are taken off in August, that the sun may shine more warmly on the grapes.In three words, for why give many reasons—since when once there is awill, there can never be any lack ofreasons—he set off.
NEWS FROM KUHSCHNAPPEL—WOMAN’S ANTICLIMAX—OPENING OF THE SEVENTH SEAL.
It is a matter which often quite puts me beyond myself that, although wedo, in the end, duly accept and honour the bills which Virtue draws upon us, we onlypaythem after such a vast number of days of grace and double-usances—although neither the devil nor Constantinople will hear of either the one or the other. Firmian urged no further pleas of objection, except for delay. He merelypostponedhis confession, thinking that as Apollo is the best consoler (Paraclete) of man, and as Nathalie had shown the basilisk of sorrow its own image in the mirror of poetry, the sight ofitselfwould be sufficient to kill it, Thus it is that all virtuous motions in us are weakened by the friction of time and of our inclinations.
One single letter, however, sent all the scenery of his theatre into confusion again. It came from Schulrath Stiefel:—
“Honoured Sir,—You doubtless remember more than too well the testamentary instruction which our mutual friend, the late lamented Poor’s Advocate, Siebenkæs, left behind him, to the effect that Herr von Blaise should make payment of the trust-funds in his hands—and, indeed (as you are aware), to your respected self in order that you, might remit it to the widow—which failing, it was the testator’s avowed intention to appear as a ghost. Be this as it may, thus much is matter of notoriety in this town and neighbourhood, that, for some weeks past, a ghost, in the likeness of our lamented friend, has pursued the Herr Heimlicher everywhere, who has, in consequence, become so ill and bedridden, that he has taken the Holy Sacrament, and made up his mind to pay over the above-mentioned moneys in good earnest. I now beg to inquire of you whether you would wish to receive them in the first instance, or whether (as would be almost more natural) they shall be paid at once to the widow. I have yet to mention that—in accordance with the desire of the testator—I sometime since married the former Mrs. Siebenkæs, and that I expect very soon to be the happiest of fathers. She is a most admirable wife and housekeeper. She is by no means a Thalæa,[110]and would lay down her life for her husband as gladly as he would lay down his for her; and I often have nothing left to desire, but that my predecessor, her good, never-to-be-forgotten first husband Siebenkæs (whohadhis little whims and eccentricities at times), could be a spectator of the happiness in which his beloved Lenette is now bathed. She weeps for him every Sunday as she goes through the churchyard, but at the same time she confesses that she is happier now than in former times. It grieves me much that it is only now that I have learnt, from my wife, in what miserable circumstances the dear departed found himself, as regarded his purse. How eagerly, had I been aware of this, I should have taken him and his wife by the arms, and assisted them as becomes a Christian! If the deceased, whonowpossesses more than any, or all, of us, can, in his glory, look down upon us, I am sure he will forgive me. I would respectfully beg for an early reply to this letter. One cause of the restitution of the trust-funds may also be, that the Heimlicher (who is an honest enough man upon the whole) is now no longer influenced by Herr von Meyern. They have completely fallen out, as all the town knows, and the latter has broken off engagements with five ladies in Bayreuth, and is about to enter into the state of holy matrimony with a native of Kuhschnappel.
“My wife is as bitter against him as Christian love permits, and says that when she meets him she feels like a hunter who encounters an old woman in his path of a morning; for he was the cause of much needless vexation between her and her husband, and she often tells me with pleasure how cleverly you, esteemed Mr. Inspector, often set this dangerous fellow down, and kept him in his place. However, he does not dare to set foot inmyhouse. I defer, for the present, a more detailed request—as to whether you would not feel inclined to fill our departed friend’s vacant place as Collaborateur in the ‘GOD’S Messenger of German Programmes,’ which (I may say without undue boasting) is taken in, and looked upon with approval in Gymnasia and Lycæa, from Swabia as far as Nürnberg, Bayreuth, and Hof. There is rather a superfluity than a lack of miserable Programme-scribblers; and (let me say it without flattery)youare the very man to wield the satiric scourge over the heads of these frog-spawn in the Castalian springs, as few otherscould. But of this more on another occasion. My wife desires to addhermost cordial remembrances to her departed husband’s highly-esteemed friend; and, hoping for a speedy answer,
“I remain, your most obedient humble servant,
“S. R. Stiefel, Schulrath.”
The human heart is shielded bygreatsorrows from the impact ofsmallones—by the waterfall from the rain.[111]Firmian forgot everything in remembering, suffering, and crying out to himself, “Thus I have lost thee for ever, wholly. Oh!thouwert good always, it wasIwho was not. Be happier than thy solitary friend whom thou mournest justly every Sunday.” He now cast all the blame of his bygone matrimonial lawsuits upon his own satirical whimsies, and ascribed the failure of his crop of happiness to his own ungenial climate.
But in this he was doing himself greater injustice than he had formerly done Lenette. I mean to make the world a present of my thoughts on this subject, on the spot. Love is the Perihelion of the fair sex; nay, it is the transit of every one of those Venuses over the sun of the ideal world. At the epoch of this “higher style” of their souls, they loveeverythingthatwelove, even the sciences, and the wholebestworld within the breast—and they despise whatwedespise, even clothes and news. In this spring of theirs these nightingales go on singing until the summer solstice; the wedding-day is their longest day. Then the devil runs away with—not exactly everything, but something every day. The bast-band of wedlock binds the poetic wings, and the bridal-bed is (for the imagination, the phantasy), an Engelsburg, and prison-cell, with bread and water. During the honeymoon I have often followed these poor birds of paradise, or peacocks of Psyche, and in this moulting-season of theirs picked up the glorious wing and tail-feathers which they have dropped; and then, when a husband has fancied he has married a naked crow, I have held out the bunch of feathers to him. Why is this? For this reason: marriage overlays the poetical world with the rind of the actual; as (according to Descartes) our earthly sphere is a sun covered over with a dirty crust, or bark. The hands of everyday labour are unwieldy, hard, and full of indurations, and find much difficulty in going on holding, or drawing the delicate threads of the woof of the ideal. Hence it is that among the upper classes (where, instead of work-roomsthere are only little work-baskets, and where the little spinning-wheels are turned on the lap with the finger, and where love still endures after marriage—often even for the husband) the wedding-ring is not so often, as among the lower orders, a Gyges-ring, which renders books and the arts of music, poetry, painting, and dancing—invisible. Upon high places plants of all sorts, and particularly female plants, have more vigour and aroma. A woman has not, as a man has, the power of protecting the outer side of her inner air-and-magic-castles against rough weather. What then is she to hold to? Her husband. He ought always to stand beside the liquid silver of the female spirit with a spoon, and keep skimming off the scum which gathers on it, that the silver-glittering sheen of the ideal may always keep bright and shining. But then there are two sorts of husbands—Arcadians, or lyric-poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau, when their hair is grey—and these are not to be controlled or comforted when they can no longer see any gold on the feminine anthology (bound with gilt edges) because they have turned the leaves of the little book over one by one, (as is the case with all gilt-edged books). Secondly, there are shepherd-hinds and sheep-smearers, I mean master-singers by profession, men-of-business, who thank God when theenchantressturns, at last, like other witches, into a grumblinghouse-cat, keeping down the vermin.
Nobody has to suffer more anxiety and alarm, combined with tedium and ennui (and therefore I intend some day to awaken the pity of my readers for this very condition, in a comic biography) than a portly, energetic, pushing, pompous, ponderousBassoof a “business-man,” who finds himself (like the elephants in Rome of old) constrained to dance on the slack-rope of love; and whose deportment and play of feature, in the circumstances,Ithink more like those of a marmot than anything else, when the warmth of a room has awakened him from his winter’s sleep, and he finds he can’t get properly into the knack of moving. It is only with widows (who wish less to be loved than to be married) that a weighty office-holder of this sort can begin his romance at the place where all the novel-writers leave theirs off—namely, at the altar-steps. A man, built after this simplest of styles, would find a great weight lifted from his heart if anybody would only love his shepherdessforhim till such time as he should have nothing to do but go and be married; and no one would have greater pleasure in taking up this burden, or cross, from them than myself. I have often thought of announcing in the public newspapers (except that I was afraid it would be looked upon as a joke) that I was prepared to swear Platonic, eternal love to any number of endurable girls (whom men of business might not even havetimeto love), and make them all the necessary love-declarations as plenipotentiary of the bridegroom-elect—in a word, to lead them on my arm, assubstitutus sine spe succedendi, orcavalier de société, athwart the whole of the unlevel land of love, till, on the frontier, I should hand over my charge, duly prepared, to the bridegroom; which would be lovemaking, rather than marrying, by ambassador. If, according to thissystema assistantiæ, there should be any one who would care to employ the writer even during the honeymoon (when a certain amount of love may still be expected to crop up), he must take care to establish all the necessary conditions in good time, beforehand.
In Siebenkæs’s Lenette (from no fault of his) the ideal isle of the blest had sunk away, miles deep, in an instant, at the very marriage altar. The husband could in nowise either help or hinder this. On the whole, dear Mr. Education-Counsellor Campe, you really should not strike so hard upon your writing-desk with your school birch-rod whenever a solitary she-frog croaks out something or other out of the nearest marsh, which is capable of being sent to an almanack. Ah me! don’t tear away from the good creatures (whodoput the loveliest dreams, all full of fantasy-flowers, into this empty life of ours) the terribly short dream of a delicate, sentimental love. They will be awakened to reality only too soon without that, and neither you nor I will be able to put them to sleep again, let us write as much as we choose.
Siebenkæs wrote off that day a brief and hurried reply to the Schulrath, saying “he was extremely glad that he had stood to the will, and the laws, and enclosed him a power of attorney to enable him to draw the money. Only he entreated him, as a great scholar and man of letters (one of a class who of ten, perhaps, suppose they understand matters of business better than they really do), to put the whole affair into a lawyer’s hands to be transacted, inasmuch asJusis of little use without jurists—nay, often not of very much evenwiththem. Toreview‘Programmes’ he had no time, let alone toreadthem; and he sent his kind regards to his wife.”
It is not displeasing to me that (as I perceive) my readers have all discovered of themselves that the ghost, or supernatural bow-wow, and mumbo-jumbo,[112]who had got the trust money out of the Heimlicher’s clutches more effectually than the wholeposse-comitatusof the Court of Exchequer, was none other than Heinrich Leibgeber, who had availed himself of his resemblance to the departed Siebenkæs to play the part ofRevenant. I need not, therefore, tell the reader what he knows already.
When one has at last managed to creep up a steep Alp with the hands of a tree-frog, one very often finds that, what one looks down at from the summit is a fresh yawning abyss. Firmian saw a new one under his feet; he had to abandon the resolution he had taken. I mean, he did not now dare to say a word to Nathalie about his resurrection from the charnel-house—his immortality after death. Alas! the happiness of his Lenette, who (in the utmost innocence) had two husbands, would then be hanging on the tip of a tongue. The blame would be his, the misery Lenette’s. No, no (he said); Time will, by slow degrees, lay dust upon my pale image in Nathalie’s kind heart, and draw the colours out of it.
In brief, he kept silence. The proud Nathalie kept silence also. In this terrible position of matters, face to face with the hard, eternalknotof the drama, he passed his anxious hours upon the stage. The raven-flight of cares and sorrows cast their flitting shadows over every charm and beauty of the spring, and poisonous dreams fell upon his sleep like mildew. Every dream-night cut the falling planetary-knot, and his heart along with it. How would Fate rescue and recover him from this poison-vapour, this azote-gas, of anguish and anxiety? How would it cure the finger-worm in his ring finger? By taking his arm off. One evening, to wit, shortly before bedtime, the Count was as confidential with him as a man of the world can ever be. He had something very pleasant to tell him, he said; only he must be allowed to say something beforehand, by way of a preface or introduction. It struck him—he went on to say, that, now that his Inspector had entered upon his duties, he was no longer quite so gay and full of humour as he had found him to be of old, but rather (if he might speak openly) downcast at times, and over-sentimental. Yet he had formerly said himself (but this was theotherLeibgeber) that he would rather hear a man swear at a mischance than lament over it; and that one might have his feet sticking in the winter, and his nose in the spring, and smell a flower, though in the midst of snow. “I forgive it, at once, for perhaps I guess the reason of it,” he added. But his forgiveness was really not quite genuine. For, like all the great, to him strength of feeling, even of a loving sort—but still more, of a sorrowful—was an annoyance; and a strong handclasp of friendship was almost as bad as a crunch on the toes. He demanded of pain that it should pass before him with a smile—of wickedness and evil, that they should pass him by laughing, or, at all events, laughedat—as, indeed, the coldest men of the world are like the physical man, whose highest temperature is about the region of the diaphragm.[113]Consequently, the previous Leibgeber—that storm-windy, but, at the same time, serene blue sky—naturally suited the Count better than this so-called Leibgeber. But how differently from us whoreadthis little reproach quietly, did Siebenkæs listen to it! Thesesolar eclipsesof his Leibgeber (which really were not even so much assun spotsbelonging tohim, but merelyapparentshadows cast on him by Siebenkæs, by reason of the position he chanced to occupy) the latter reproached himself with as so many deadly sins against his friend, which he felt it absolutely necessary to confess and do penance for.
As the Count now went on to say, “This melancholy of yours can scarcely be caused altogether by grief at the loss of your friend Siebenkæs, because since his death you have never spoken to me of him with such warmth as when he was alive. Pardon me this frankness,”—a fresh pang at this shadowing of Leibgeber cut across his brow, and it was with difficulty that he could allow his patron to finish his explanation. “But this is not a shortcoming inmyeyes, dear Leibgeber: on the contrary, it is an excellence. We ought not to go on eternally mourning for the dead; if we grieve at all, it should be for the living. And even the latter species of grief may come to an end with you next week, for then I expect my daughter, and” (he spoke here very deliberately) “her friend Nathalie with her. They have meten route.” Siebenkæs sprang hastily up, stood speechless and motionless, held his hand before his eyes, not to hide them, but to keep the light out of them, so that he might look through, and follow the course of, the cloud-masses of thought which were piled one over another and rolling in all directions, ere he should give his answer.
But the Count—misconstruing him (as Leibgeber) in all points, and ascribing his sentimental metamorphosis to Nathalie’s account, and the fact of his being deprived of her—begged him merely to hear him out before speaking, and to accept his assurance that he would be delighted to do everything in his power to retain his daughter’s lovely friend always in the neighbourhood. Heavens! what thousandfold entanglement the Count made of a matter so wholly simple!
Here Siebenkæs, stormed at from fresh points of the compass, had to beg for a moment to think—for there were nowthreesouls at stake—but he had scarcely taken one or two hasty steps across the room, when he stood firm again, and said to the Count, and to himself, “Yes, I shall do what is right.” Then he begged the Count to give his word of honour that he would keep inviolate a secret which he would confide to him, and which neither related to, nor would injure, himself or his daughter in the slightest degree. “In that case why should I not?” answered the Count, to whom the discovery of a secret was as the clearing away of a thick woodland before a fine view.
Then Firmian opened his heart, his life, and everything, like a stream let loose and dashing into a new channel, not yet to be measured with a glance. The Count several times detained him by fresh misunderstandings, because he had only preassumed, out of his own imagination, a love on Nathalie’s part for the real Leibgeber, and had never heard from any one of her real love for Siebenkæs.
And now the astonished Count, in his turn, astonished the Advocate; and, of all the many faces which in such a case he might have put on—faces offended, angry, startled, embarrassed, delighted, cold—he only showed the Inspector an exceedingly contented one. It only particularly pleased him, he said, that hehadobserved so many little matters which rather vexed him, and that in certain points he hadnotthought over-highly of Leibgeber; but what delighted him most was his good fortune at possessing, in this manner, adoubleLeibgeber, and the knowledge that the absent one was not sorrowing for a dead friend.
Let no one be surprised at the Count’s maintaining his good-humour and serenity who has seen a bright order-star sparkle on an aged, and extinguished, breast. When our old man of the world beheld the little shuttle of this chain of friends flying to and fro between love and sacrifice on either side; when he held in his hand the bright Raphael-tapestry of friendship which it wove, and looked at it closely, there came to him the enjoyment ofsomething new, for the first time for many years. So that, up to this point, he had been sitting in his front box before a living comic-historical drama, of which he himself unravelled the plot, and which could be performed all over again in his head at any given moment. Moreover, his Inspector had become a new being for him, full of fresh entertainment, inasmuch as he had gone off the stage, changed his dress and re-entered as the pseudo-deceased Siebenkæs; and could, in the future, tell him as much as he pleased of the narrator. In this way both the friends had become flatteringly-precious to him, by reason of the dependent interest in him with which they had interwoven the bond which bound their souls.
He who has tasted the bliss of sticking to the truth can understand the new delight with which Siebenkæs could now pour himself out unrestrained concerning everything—himself and Henry and Nathalie—inasmuch as it was not till now that he felt the full weight of the burden he had got relieved of—that of working the light, jest-falsehood of a moment into a yearly comedy, in 365 acts. With what ease he explained to the Count that, before Nathalie’s arrival (whom he could neither undeceive, nor go on deceiving), he must fly, and that straight to Kuhschnappel. As the Count listened, he told him all the reasons urging him to go; longing to see his tombstone, and unhallowed grave, so as to do penitence and expiation; longing to see Lenette, unseen, from afar, perhaps her child near; longing to hear from eye-witnesses a minute account of her happy married life with Stiefel (for Stiefel’s letter had wafted the flower ashes of bygone days into his eyes, and opened the leaves of the sleeping-flower of his conjugal love); longing to wander, romantically (erect now, and with his burden off), about the scenes of his old oppressed life; longing to hear, in the market-town, something of his Leibgeber, who had been there so recently; longing to celebrate August, the month of his death, in solitude—the month when it had been with him as with the vine, whose leaves are taken off in August, that the sun may shine more warmly on the grapes.
In three words, for why give many reasons—since when once there is awill, there can never be any lack ofreasons—he set off.