Christmas Recollections.--New Occurrence.
For all of us the passage to the grave is, alas! a string of empty, insipid days, as of glass pearls, only here and there divided by an orient one of price. But you die murmuring, unless, like the Quintus, you regard your existence as a drum; this has only one singletone, but variety oftimegives the sound of it cheerfulness enough. Our Quintus taught in the Fourth Class; vicariated in the Second; wrote at his desk by night; and so lived on the usual monotonous fashion--all the time from the Holidays--till Christmas eve, 1791; and nothing was remarkable in his history except this same eve, which I am now about to paint.
But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first place, explaining shortly how, like birds of passage, he had contrived to soar away over the dim, cloudy Harvest. The secret was, he set upon theHamburg Political Journal, with which the lackeys of Schadeck had been for papering their buttons. He could now calmly, with his back at the stove, accompany the winter campaigns of the foregoing year; and fly after every battle, as the ravens did after that of Pharsalia. On the printed paper he could still, with joy and admiration, walk round our German triumphal arches and scaffoldings for fireworks; while to the people in the town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very fragments of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the French, were scarcely discernible; nay, with old plans he could drive back and discomfit the enemy, while later readers in vain tried to resist them with new ones.
Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the French prepossess him in favor of this journal; but also the circumstance that it--cost him nothing. His attachment to gratis reading was decided. And does not this throw light on the fact that he, as Morhof advised, was wont sedulously to collect the separate leaves of wastepaper books as they came from the grocer, and to rake among the same, as Virgil did in Ennius? Nay, for him the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a Frederick (the king), both which persons were in the habit of simply cutting from complete books such leaves as contained anything. It was also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him with such esteem for the aprons of French cooks, which it is well known consist of printed paper; and he often wished some German would translate these aprons; indeed, I am willing to believe that a good version of more than one of such paper aprons might contribute to elevate our Literature (this Museà belles fesses), and serve her in place of drivel-bib.--On many things a man puts apretium affectionis, simply because he hopes he may have half stolen them; on this principle, combined with the former, our Quintus adopted into his belief anything he could snap away from an open Lecture, or as a visitor in class-rooms; opinions only for which the Professor must be paid, he rigorously examined.--I return to the Christmas eve.
At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors millers and bakers were at fisticuffs (as we say of drifting snow in large flakes), and the ice-flowers of the window were blossoming; for external frost, with a snug warm room, was what he liked. He could now put fir wood into his stove, and Mocha coffee into his stomach; and shove his right foot (not into the slipper, but) under the warm side of his Shock, and also on the left keep swinging his pet Starling, which was pecking at the snout of old Schil; and then with the right hand--with the left he was holding his pipe--proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, so cloud-capt, without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest enterprise which a Quintus can attempt,--to writing the Class-prodromus of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth part thereof. I hold thefirst printingin the history of a literary man to be more important than thefirst printingin the history of Letters. Fixlein could not sate himself with specifying what he purposed, God willing, in the following year, to treat of; and accordingly, more for the sake of printing than of use, he further inserted three or four pedagogic glances at the plan of operations to be followed by his schoolmaster colleagues as a body.
He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his thoughts together; and then laid aside theOpus, and would no longer look at it, that so, when printed, he might stand astonished at his own thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig Fair Catalogue, which he purchased yearly, instead of the books therein, and open it without a sigh; he too was in print, as well as I am.
The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, rubbed his hands, hitched about on his chair, puckered his face, and sucked the end of his cue.--He could now spring up about five o'clock in the evening to recreate himself; and across the magic vapor of his pipe, like a new-caught bird, move up and down in his cage. On the warm smoke the long galaxy of street-lamps was gleaming; and red on his bed-curtains lay the fitful reflection of the blazing windows and illuminated trees in the neighborhood. And now he shook away the snow of Time from the winter-green of Memory; and beheld the fair years of his childhood, uncovered, fresh, green, and balmy, standing afar off before him. From his distance of twenty years, he looked into the quiet cottage of his parents, where his father and his brother had not yet been reaped away by the sickle of Death. He said to himself: "I will go through the whole Christmas eve, from the very dawn, as I had it of old."
At his very rising he finds spangles on the table; sacred spangles from the gold-leaf and silver-leaf with which the Christ-child[47]has been emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the presents of the night.--On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier than the golden cars, and golden Pythagoras-legs, and golden Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists.--Then came his mother, bringing him both Christianity and clothes; for in drawing on his trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and in tying his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and daylight come, he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and devotes far less attention than usual to the little white winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.--I nowise grudge J. J. Rousseau hisFlora Petrinsularis;[48]but let him also allow our Quintus hisWindow-flora.--There was no such thing as school all day; so he had time enough to seek his Flescher (his brother), and commence (when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.--About three o'clock the old Gardener, whom neighbors must call the Professor of Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the fragments in two heaps on the table; then as the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his brother, "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he himself lies in wait the whole evening.
About eight o'clock--here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his letter-drawer--both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing, and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child find them up, are put to bed. What a magic night! What tumult of dreaming hopes!--The populous, motley, glittering cave of Fancy opens itself, in the length of the night, and in the exhaustion of dreamy effort, still darker and darker, fuller and more grotesque; but the awakening gives back to the thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental tones, the cries of animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout Fancy, sounds out of Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air, church-music of the morning worship.--
Ah! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and playthings, which then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of joy against the chambers of our hearts; and which yet in the moonlight of memory, with its dusky landscapes, melts our souls in sweetness. Ah! this was it, that then for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes; but now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we have left!
At last came rapid lights from the neighborhood playing through the window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, and the crowing from the steeple, hurries both the boys from their bed. With their clothes in their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit perfume of the still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud the dainties on the table, and the many-colored grove on the wall; and a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of Eden.----
--On a sudden all grew light; and the Quintus got--the Conrectorship, and a table-clock.
Office-brokage.--Discovery of the Promised Secret.--Hans von Füchslein.
For while the Quintus, in his vapory chamber was thus running over the sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or City-officer, entered with a lantern and the Presentation; and behind him the courier of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days sick-bed exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted,first, of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hour struck, and drumming along with every stroke;secondly, of the Conrectorate, which she had procured for him.
As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsenfingen Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider it my duty to offer a defence for the body corporate; and that rather here than in theReichsanzeiger, orImperial Indicator.--I have already mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade in Hamburg candles; and the then Burgermeister in coffee-beans, which he sold as well whole as ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they carried on exclusively, was in the eight School-offices of Flachsenfingen; the other members of the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shopmen, and accountants in the Council wareroom. A Council-house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only resolutions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of office-trading from that principle of the Roman law,Cui jus est donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est; that is to say, He who has the right of giving anything away has also a right to dispose of it for money, if he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of course.
Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general.
My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commission[49]of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the commonweal must suffer in the long run, if important posts are distributed, not according to the current cash which is laid down for them, but according to connections, relationships, party recommendations, and bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction, to charge titulary offices dearer than real ones? Should one not rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay higher by thealterum tantumthan the mere titulary Hofrath?--Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent and representative of value in all things, and consequently in understanding; the rather as aheadis stamped on it; to pay down the purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less than to stand anexamen rigorosum, which is held by a goodschema examinandi. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your qualifications, in place of these their surrogates, and assignates, andmonnoie de confiance, is simply to resemble the crazy philosophers inGulliver's Travels, who, for social converse, instead of names of things, brought the things themselves tied up in a bag; it is, indeed, plainly as much as trying to fall back into the barbarous times of trade by barter, when the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on their leather money, drove forth the beeves themselves.
From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far removed, that often, when I used to read that the King of France was devising new offices, to stand and sell them under the booth of his Baldaquin, I have set myself to do something of the like. This I shall now at least calmly propose; not vexing my heart whether Governments choose to adopt it or not. As our Sovereign will not allow us to multiply offices purely for sale, nay, on the contrary, is day and night (like managers of strolling companies) meditating how to give more parts to one State-actor; and thus to the Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players; as the above French method, therefore, will not apply, could we not at least contrive to invent some Virtues harmonizing with the offices, along with which they might be sold as titles? Might we not, for instance, with the office of a Referendary, put off at the same time a titular Incorruptibility, for a fair consideration; and so that this virtue, as not belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by the candidate? Such a market-title and patent of nobility could not but be ornamental to a Referendary. We forget that in former times such high titles were appended to all posts whatsoever. The scholastic Professor then wrote himself (besides his official designation) "The Seraphic," "The Incontrovertible," "The Penetrating"; the King wrote himself, "The Great," "The Bald," "The Bold," and so also did the Rabbins. Could it be unpleasant to gentlemen in the higher stations of Justice, if the titles of Impartiality, Rapidity, &c., might be conferred on them by sale, as well as the posts themselves? Thus with the appointment of a Kammerrath, or Councillor of Revenue, the virtue of Patriotism might fitly be conjoined; and I believe few Advocates would grudge purchasing the title of Integrity (as well as their common one of Government-advocacy), were it to be had in the market. If, however, any candidate chose to take his post without the virtues, then it would stand with himself to do so, and in the adoption of this reflex morality Government should not constrain him.
It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, clothes, according to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper names, exert an influence on men, appellatives would do so still more; since, on us, as on testaceous animals,the foam so often hardens into shell; but such internal morality is not a thing the State can have an eye to; for, as in the fine arts, it is not this, but therepresentationof it, which forms her true aim.
I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices different verbal-virtues; but I should think there might many such divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, Public-spirit, Sincerity, and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted out; were but some well-disposed minister of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral Address Department, with some half-dozen secretaries, who, for a small salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. Were I in their place, I should hold a good prism before the white ray of Virtue, and divide it completely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted--their subdivision I mean;--our country Judges might then be selected for this purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they have a daily training how out of every mischief to make several small ones, none of which they ever punish to a greater amount than their five florins. This is a precious moralRolfinkenism, which our Jurists have learned from the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a cherry-stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who, by side-scrapings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a venial!--
School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic certainly; yet still they are monarchies,--school-monarchies, to wit,--resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope's verse, is twice exposed to sale in the century; a statement, I need hardly say, arithmetically false, Newton having settled the average duration of a reign at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council bring the young of the community a Hamel'sRat-and-Child-catcher; or a Weissen'sChild's-friend,--this to the Council can make no difference; seeing the Schoolmaster is not a horse, for whose secret defects the horse-dealer is to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co. cannot reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius; for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation and ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who properly forms the true care and profit of the State; as your costly carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coarse grain-pearls for medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of Inspectors, when they go examining schools, that they do not make the schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of his class in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him.
End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general.
Now again to our history! The Councillor Heads of the Firm had conferred the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view to the continued consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the strength of a quite mad notion: they believed the Quintus would very soon die.
--And here I have reached a most important circumstance in this History, and one into which I have yet let no mortal look; now, however, it no longer depends on my will whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen from it or not; but I must positively lay it open, nay, hang a reverberating-lamp over it.
In medical history, it is a well-known fact, that in certain families the people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these families they are all born at the same age (of nine months); nay, from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the members of which at the same age all killed themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their thirty-second year, took to bed and died; every one of my readers would do well to insert in his copy of theThirty Years' War, Schiller having entirely omitted it, the fact, that, in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet; all in their thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter thus: "The first two or three times, it happened purely by accident; and the other times, the people died of sheer fright: if not so, the whole fact is rather to be questioned."
But what did Fixlein make of the affair? Little or nothing; the only thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall in love with Thiennette; that so no other might have cause for fear on his account. He himself, however, for five reasons, minded it so little, that he hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before he died. First, because three Gypsies, in three different places, and at three different times, had each shown him the same long vista of years in her magic mirror. Secondly, because he had a sound constitution. Thirdly, because his own brother had formed an exception, and perished before the thirties. Fourthly, on this ground: When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet, and only been saved from death by his playthings; and with this Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous Genius of his race the slip. Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and with them the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right definite deadly fear: "It may be," said he, "that I have got whisked away over this whoreson year, and no one the wiser." I will not deny that last year he had fancied he was two-and-thirty; "however," said he, "if I am not to be so till, God willing, the next (1792), it may run away as smoothly as the last; am I not always inHiskeeping? And were it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off from the life of my brother should be added to mine?" Thus, under the cold snow of the Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out of it a fair snow-man.
The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite opinion; and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once from the Quintusship to the Conrectorate; swearing to themselves that he would soon vacate it again. Properly speaking, by school-seniority, this holy chair should have belonged to the Subrector Hans von Füchslein; but he wished it not; being minded to become Hukelum Parson; especially, as Astmann's Death-angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more and more widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. "If the fellow weather another year, 't is more than I expect," said Hans.
This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a Hanoverian Post-boy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style of manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus, whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone bore a grudge; simply becauseFixleindid not write himselfFüchslein, and had not chosen along with him to purchase a Patent of Nobility. The Subrector, on this his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage; and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to the train: "He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind him of it." The mild, compliant Quintus never noticed this large wasp-poison-bag in the Subrector, but took it for a honey-bag; nay, by his brotherly warmness, which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he concreted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The Quintus, in his simplicity, took Füchslein's contempt for envy of his pedagogic talents.
A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof, and Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas eve he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for nothing but--daylight; joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep-grains; and to-night, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.
On Christmas morn he looked at his Class-prodromus, and thought but little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night's foolish inflation about his Quintusship. "The Quintus-post," said he to himself, "is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I wonder how I could parade so last night before my promotion; at present, I had more reason." To-day he eat, as on all Sundays and holidays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man Fixlein was, what common people arealways, but polished, philosophical, and sentimental people veryseldomare,--thankful; a man thanks you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents of his own; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person. Meister Steinberger, in the character of storemaster, had introduced into the wire-cage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household bread, andSauerkraut. Money indeed was never to be wrung from him; it is well known that he often sent the best calf-skins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for our Quintus; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had to bear.--On Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times customary, a smaller damask table-cloth was laid upon the large coarser one; the arm-chair, silver implements, and a wine-soup were handed him; mere waste, which, as the Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a Scholar; but for a Flescher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals, and then signified that he was made Conrector. "Ward," said Steinberger, "if you are made that, it is well.--Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy cows now; I must have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must now be applied to the Conrectorate; for he was in the habit of advancing all instalment-dues to his Ward, at an interest of four and a half per cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his advancement to the Quintusship; of these the interest had to be duly paid; yet, on the day of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; being wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian's daughter in arithmetic, writing, and geography. Steinberger with justice required of his own grown-up daughter that she should know all the towns where he in his wanderings as a journeyman had slain fat oxen; and if she slipped, or wrote crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as Academical Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready, so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out the dross from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right ductility. The soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this account she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and assignee of her heart. The old Flescher--simply because his wife was dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart; and had in consequence long ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their joys; to-day, at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become unusuallyred.
When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at him," said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get her; butwehave done with one another; for a learned man needs quite another sort of thing."
"Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein, (for this post Steinberger filled in the Provincial Militia,) "such a match were far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty times; and then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and suspend his slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy husband?"
"Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva.
"Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flescher; "with this crook thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed the keenlier.
Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with debts, as with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those are the best which can be expressed in the smallest numbers. Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his arm; for the notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second year, and that so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with their debts--this notion he named stuff and old-wifery; he was neither Superstitious nor Fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action, such as the common man much oftener has than your vaporing man of letters, or your empty, dainty man of rank.
As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the most a few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this Fixleinic Life, embedded in the dross of week-day cares; and as if they were so many veins of silver, am separating, stamping, smelting, and burnishing for the reader,--I must now travel on with the stream, his history to Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few handfuls of this gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biographical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contrary, is very metalliferous; do but consider that Fixlein is yet uncertain (the ashes of the Church-books not being legible) whether it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his thirty-third year.
From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became Conrector. The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, from his Quintus-ashes, a young Ph[oe]nix combined itself together. Great changes--in offices, marriages, travels--make us younger; we always date our history from the last revolution, as the French have done from theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of seniority as corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in his whole life has never been aught else except a--crown-prince.
Cantata-Sunday.--Two Testaments.--Pontac; Blood; Love.
The spring months clothe the earth in new variegated hues; but man they usually dress in black. Just when our icy regions are becoming fruitful, and the flower-waves of the meadows are rolling together over our quarter of the globe, we on all hands meet with men in sables, the beginning of whose Spring is full of tears. But, on the other hand, this very upblooming of the renovated earth is itself the best balm for sorrow over those who lie under it; and graves are better hid by blossoms than by snow.
In April, which is no less deadly than it is fickle, old Senior Astmann, our Conrector's teacher, was overtaken by death. His departure it was meant to hide from the Rittmeisterinn; but the unusual ringing of funeral peals carried his swan-song to her heart; and gradually set the curfew-bell of her life into similar movement. Age and sufferings had already marked out the first incisions for Death, so that he required but little effort to cut her down; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched long before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The second stroke of apoplexy was soon followed by the last; it is strange that Death, like criminal courts, cites the apoplectic thrice.
Men are apt to postpone theirlastwill as long as theirbetterone; the Rittmeisterinn would perhaps have let all her hours, till the speechless and deaf one, roll away without testament, had not Thiennette, during the last night before from sick-nurse she became corpse-watcher, reminded the patient of the poor Conrector, and of his meagre, hunger-bitten existence, and of the scanty aliment and board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, and of his empty Future, where, like a drooping, yellow plant in the parched deal-box of the school-room, between scholars and creditors, he must languish to the end. Her own poverty offered her a model of his; and her inward tears were the fluid tints with which she colored her picture. As the Rittmeisterinn's testament related solely to domestics and dependants, and as she began with the male one, Fixlein stood at the top; and Death, who must have been a special friend of the Conrector's, did not lift his scythe and give the last stroke, till hisprotégéhad been with audible voice declared testamentary heir; then he cut all away,--life, testament, and hopes.
When the Conrector, in a wash-bill from his mother, received these two Death's-posts and Job's-posts in his class, the first thing he did was to dismiss his class-boys, and break into tears before reaching home. Though the mother had informed him that he had been remembered in the will (I could wish, however, that the Notary had blabbed how much it was), yet almost with every O which he masoretically excerpted from his German Bible, and entered in his Masoretic Work, great drops fell down on his pen, and made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the gorgeous sorrow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the departed in the winding-sheet, and breaks the cry of anguish in soft tones of plaintiveness; nor the sorrow of the Philosopher, who, through one open grave, must look into the whole catacomb-Necropolis of the Past, and before whom the spectre of a friend expands into the spectral Shadow of this whole Earth; but it was the woe of a child, of a mother, whom this thought itself, without subsidiary reflections, bitterly cuts asunder: "So I shall never more see thee; so must thou moulder away, and I shall never see thee, thou good soul, never, never any more!"--And even because he neither felt the philosophical nor the poetical sadness, every trifle could make a division, a break in his mourning; and, like a woman, he was that very evening capable of sketching some plans for the future employment of his legacy.
Four weeks after, to wit, on the 5th of May, the testament was unsealed; but not till the 6th (Cantata-Sunday) did he go down to Hukelum. His mother met his salutations with tears; which she shed, over the corpse for grief, over the testament for joy.--To the now Conrector Egidius Zebedäus was left:In the first place, a large sumptuous bed, with a mirror-tester, in which the giant Goliath might have rolled at his ease, and to which I and my fair readers will by and by approach nearer, to examine it;secondly, there was devised to him, as unpaid Easter-godchild-money, for every year that he had lived, one ducat;thirdly, all the admittance and instalment dues, which his elevation to the Quintate and Conrectorate had cost him, were to be made good to the utmost penny. "And dost thou know, then," proceeded the mother, "what the poor Fräulein has got? Ah Heaven! Nothing! Not one brass farthing!" For Death had stiffened the hand, which was just stretching itself out to reach the poor Thiennette a little rain-screen against the foul weather of life. The mother related this perverse trick of Fortune with true condolence; which in women dissipates envy, and comes easier to them than congratulation, a feeling belonging rather to men. In many female hearts sympathy and envy are such near door-neighbors that they could be virtuous nowhere except in Hell, where men have such frightful times of it; and vicious nowhere except in Heaven, where people have more happiness than they know what to do with.
The Conrector was now enjoying on Earth that Heaven to which his benefactress had ascended. First of all, he started off--without so much as putting up his handkerchief, in which lay his emotion--up-stairs to see the legacy-bed unshrouded; for he had afemalepredilection for furniture. I know not whether the reader ever looked at or mounted any of these ancient chivalric beds, into which, by means of a little stair without balustrades, you can easily ascend; and in which you, properly speaking, sleep always at least one story above ground. Nazianzen informs us (Orat. XVI.) that the Jews, in old times, had high beds with cock-ladders of this sort; but simply because of vermin. The legacy bed-Ark was quite as large as one of these; and a flea would have measured it, not in Diameters of the Earth, but in Distances of Sirius. When Fixlein beheld this colossal dormitory, with the curtains drawn asunder, and its canopy of looking-glass, he could have longed to be in it; and had it been in his power to cut from the opaque hemisphere of Night, at that time in America, a small section, he would have established himself there along with it, just to swim about, for one half-hour, with his thin lath figure, in this sea of down. The mother, by longer chains of reasoning and chains of calculation than the bed was, had not succeeded in persuading him to have the broad mirror on the top cut in pieces, though his large dressing-table had nothing to see itself in but a mere shaving-glass; he let the mirror lie where it was for this reason: "Should I ever, God willing, get married," said he, "I shall then, towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife, without sitting up in bed."
As to the second article of the testament, the godchild Easter-pence, his mother had, last night, arranged it perfectly. The Lawyer took her evidence on the years of the heir; and these she had stated at exactly the teeth-number, two-and-thirty. She would willingly have lied, and passed off her son, like an Inscription, for older than he was; but against thisvenia ætatis, she saw too well the authorities would have taken exception, "that it was falsehood and cozenage; had the son been two-and-thirty, he must have been dead some time ago, as it could not but be presumed that he then was."
And just as she was recounting this, a servant from Schadeck called; and delivered to the Conrector, in return for a discharge and ratification of the birth-certificate given out by his mother, a gold bar of two-and-thirty ducat age-counters, like a helm-bar for the voyage of his life; Herr von Aufhammer was too proud to engage in any pettifogging discussion over a plebeian birth-certificate.
And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the best lawsuits thrown to the dogs; seeing this gold bar might, in the wire-mill of the judgment-bench, have been drawn out into the finest threads. From such a tangled lock, which was not to be unravelled--for in the first place, there was no document to prove Fixlein's age; in the second place, so long as he lived, the necessary conclusion was, that he was not yet thirty-two[50]--from such a lock might not only silk and hanging-cords, but whole drag nets, have been spun and twisted? Clients in general would have less reason to complain of their causes, if these lasted longer. Philosophers contend for thousands of years over philosophical questions; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, that Advocates should attempt to end their juristical questions in a space of eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But the professors of Law are not to blame for this; on the other hand, as Lessing asserts of Truth, that not thefinding, but theseekingof it profits men, and that he himself would willingly make over his claim to all truths in return for the sweet labor of investigation, so is the professor of Law not profited by the finding and deciding, but by the investigation of a juridical truth,--which is called pleading and practising,--and he would willingly consent to approximate to Truth forever, like an hyperbola to its asymptote, without ever meeting it, seeing he can subsist as an honorable man with wife and child, let such approximation be as tedious as it likes.
The Schadeck servant had, besides the gold legacy, a further commission from the Lawyer, whereby the testamentary heir was directed to sum up the mint-dues which he had been obliged to pay while lying under the coining-press of his superiors, as Quintus and Conrector; the which, properly documented and authenticated, were forthwith to be made good to him.
Our Conrector, who now rated himself among the great capitalists of the world, held his short gold-roll like a sceptre in his hand; like a basket-net lifted from the sea of the Future, which was now to run on, and bring him all manner of fed-fishes, well-washed, sound, and in good season.
I cannot relate all things at once; else I should ere now have told the reader, who must long have been waiting for it, that to the moneyed Conrector his two-and-thirty godchild-pennies but too much prefigured the two-and-thirty years of his age; besides which, to-day the Cantata-Sunday, this Bartholomew-night and Second of September of his family, came in as a further aggravation. The mother, who should have known the age of her child, said she had forgotten it; but durst wager he was thirty-two a year ago; only the Lawyer was a man you could not speak to. "I could swear it myself," said the capitalist; "I recollect how stupid I felt Cantata-Sunday last year." Fixlein beheld Death, not as the poet does, in the uptowering, asunder-driving concave-mirror of Imagination; but as the child, as the savage, as the peasant, as the woman does, in the plane octavo-mirror on the board of a Prayer-book; and Death looked to him like an old white-headed man, sunk down into slumber in some latticed pew.--
And yet he thought oftener of him than last year; for joy readily melts us into softness; and the lackered Wheel of Fortune is a cistern-wheel that empties its water in our eyes.... But the friendly Genius of this terrestrial, or rather aquatic Ball--for, in the physical and in the moral world, there are more tear-seas than firm land--has provided for the poor water-insects that float about in it, for us, namely, a quite special elixir against spasms in the soul; I declare this same Genius must have studied the whole pathology of man with care; for to the poor devil who is no Stoic, and can pay no Soul-doctor, that for the fissures of his cranium and his breast might prepare costly prescriptions of simples, he has stowed up cask-wise in all cellarages a precious wound-water, which the patient has only to take and pour over his slashes and bone-breakages--gin-twist, I mean, or beer, or a touch of wine.... By Heaven! it is either stupid ingratitude towards this medicinal Genius on the one hand, or theological confusion of permitted tippling with prohibited drunkenness on the other, if men do not thank God that they have something at hand, which, in the nervous vertigoes of life, will instantly supply the place of Philosophy, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, andTime;--liquor, as I said.
The Conrector had long before sunset given the village post three groschens of post-money, and commissioned--for he had a whole cabinet of ducats in his pocket, which all day he was surveying in the dark with his hand--three thalers' worth of Pontac from the town. "I must have a Cantata merry-making," said he; "if it be my last day, let it be my gayest too!" I could wish he had given a larger order; but he kept the bit of moderation between his teeth at all times; even in a threatened sham-death-night, and in the midst of jubilee. The question is, whether he would not have restricted himself to a single bottle, if he had not wished to treat his mother and the Fräulein. Had he lived in the tenth century, when the Day of Judgment was thought to be at hand, or in other centuries, when new Noah's Deluges were expected, and when, accordingly, like sailors in a shipwreck, people boused up all,--he would not have spent one kreuzer more on that account. His joy was, that with his legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinberger, and leave the world an honest man. Just people, who make much of money, pay their debts the most punctually.
The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could compare the red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, which it would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses,--with the Evening-carnation of the last clouds about the Sun....
I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one can be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I; nevertheless, it is not permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room to my historical scene before the time. Poor girl! The Conrector cannot wish more warmly than his Biographer, that, in the Temple of Nature as in that of Jerusalem, there were a special door--besides that of Death--standing open, through which only the afflicted entered, that a Priest might give them solace. But Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister rather made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations excepted; had fettered all her steps which led not to some task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden them, save down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep.
All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and makes the Prosaist a Psalmist; in sorrow alone have women courage to front opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the evening, and then only in the garden.
The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of his fair friend, to offer his thanks,--and to-night also--his Pontac. Three Pontac decanters and three wineglasses were placed outside on the projecting window-sill of his cottage; and every time he returned from the dusky covered-way amid the flower forests, he drank a little from his glass,--and the mother sipped now and then from within through the opened window.
I have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the southwest corner of the garden or park, over against the Castle-Escurial, which stretched back into the village. In the northwest corner bloomed an acacia grove, like the floral crown of the garden. Fixlein turned his steps in that direction also; to see if, perhaps, he might not cast a happy glance through the wide-latticed grove over the intervening meads to Thiennette. He recoiled a little before two stone steps leading down into a pond before this grove, which were sprinkled with fresh blood. On the flags, also, there was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of our life's lamp where he finds it shed; to him it is the red death-signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively into the grove; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the flower-bushes; her hands with her knitting-ware sunk into her bosom, her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber; her left arm in the real bandage of bloodletting; and with cheeks to which the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings--this day's included--had taken from them. Fixlein, after his first terror--not at this flower's sleep, but at his own abrupt entrance--began to unroll the spiral butterfly's-sucker of his vision, and to lay it on the motionless leaves of this same sleeping flower. At bottom, I may assert, that this was the first time he had ever looked at her; he was now among the thirties; and he still continued to believe, that, in a young lady, he must look at the clothes only, not the person, and wait on her with his ears, not with his eyes.
I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that the Conrector plucked up courage to--turn, to come back, and employ the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, trampling, and calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair sleeper. To take her by the hand, and with some medical apology, gently pull her out of sleep, this was an audacity of which the Conrector, so long as he could stand for Pontac, and had any grain of judgment left, could never dream.
However, he did awake her, by those other means.
Wearied, heavy-laden Thiennette! how slowly does thy eye open! The warmest balsam of this earth, soft sleep has shifted aside, and the night-air of memory is again blowing on thy naked wounds!--and yet was the smiling friend of thy youth the fairest object which thy eye could light on, when it sank from the hanging-garden of Dreams into this lower one round thee.
She herself was little conscious,--and the Conrector not at all,--that she was bending her flower-leaves imperceptibly towards a terrestrial body, namely, towards Fixlein. She resembled an Italian flower, that contains cunningly concealed within it a new-year's gift, which the receiver knows not at first how to extract. But now the golden chain of her late kind deed attracted her as well towards him, as him towards her. She at once gave her eye and her voice a mask of joy; for she did not put her tears, as Catholics do those of Christ, in relic-vials, upon altars, to be worshipped. He could very suitably preface his invitation to the Pontac festival with a long acknowledgment of thanks for the kind intervention which had opened to him the sources for procuring it. She rose slowly, and walked with him to the banquet of wine; but he was not so discreet, as at first to attempt leading her, or rather not so courageous; he could more easily have offered a young lady his hand (that is, with marriage ring) than offered her his arm. One only time in his life had he escorted a female, a Lombard Countess from the theatre; a thing truly not to be believed, were not this the secret of it, that he was obliged; for the lady, a foreigner, parted in the press from all her people, in a bad night, had laid hold of him as a sable Abbé by the arm, and requested him to take her to her inn. He, however, knew the fashions of society, and attended her no farther than the porch of his Quintus-mansion, and there directed her with his finger to her inn, which, with thirty blazing windows, was looking down from another street.
These things he cannot help. But to-night he had scarcely, with his fair, faint companion, reached the bank of the pond, into which some superstitious dread of water-spirits had lately poured the pure blood of her left arm,--when, in his terror lest she fell in, with the rest of her blood, over the brink, he quite valiantly laid hold of the sick arm. Thus will much Pontac and a little courage at all times put a Conrector in case to lay hold of a Fräulein. I aver that at the banquet-board of the wine, at the window-sill, he continued in the same conducting position. What a soft group in the penumbra of the Earth, while Night, with its dusky waters, was falling deeper and deeper, and the silver-light of the Moon was already glancing back from the copper ball of the steeple! I call the group soft, because it consists of a maiden that in two senses has been bleeding; of a mother again with tears giving her thanks for the happiness of her child; and of a pious, modest man, pouring wine, and drinking health to both, and who traces in his veins a burning lava-stream, which is boiling through his heart, and threatening piece by piece to melt it and bear it away. A candle stood without among the three bottles, like Reason among the Passions; on this account the Conrector looked without intermission at the window-panes, for on them (the darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was painted, among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked best of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflection, the face of Thiennette.
Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a Preparation-Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from the evening dew, and the Pontac from their eyes, and the bean-stalks were casting a shorter grating of shadow. The quicksilver-drops of stars were hanging more and more continuous in the sable of night. The warm vapor of the wine set our two friends (like steam-engines) again in motion.
Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking to and fro in the night. Fixlein now led the Fräulein in his arm without scruple. By reason of her lancet-wound, Thiennette could only put her hand, in a clasping position, in his arm; and he, to save her the trouble of holding fast, held fast himself, and pressed her fingers as well as might be with his arm to his heart. It would betray a total want of polished manners to censure his. At the same time, trifles are the provender of Love; the fingers are electric discharges of a fire sparkling along every fibre; sighs are the guiding tones of two approximating hearts; and the worst and most effectual thing of all in such a case is some misfortune; for the fire of Love, like that of naphtha, likes to swim on water. Two tear-drops, one in another's, one in your own eyes, compose, as with two convex lenses, a microscope which enlarges everything, and changes all sorrows into charms. Good sex! I too consider every sister in misfortune as fair; and, perhaps, thou wouldst deserve the name of the Fair, even because thou art the Suffering sex!
And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all the wounds of the human frame in wax, to teach his pupils how to cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in little figures the cuts and scars of thy spirit, though only to keep away rude hands from inflicting new ones....
Thiennette felt not the loss of the inheritance, but of her that should have left it; and this more deeply for one little trait, which she had already told his mother, as she now told him. In the last two nights of the Rittmeisterinn, when the feverish watching was holding up to Thiennette's imagination nothing but the winding-sheet and the mourning-coaches of her protectress; while she was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking on those fixed eyes, unconsciously quick drops often trickled over her cheeks, while in thought she prefigured the heavy, cumbrous dressing of her benefactress for the coffin. Once after midnight, the dying lady pointed with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood her not; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried to lift her head, but could not,--and only rounded her lips. At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing, whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, wished that she herself should embrace her. O then, that instant, keen and tearful, she pressed her warm lips on the colder,--and she was silent like her that was to speak no more,--and she embraced alone and was not embraced. About four o'clock, the finger waved again; she sank down on the stiffened lips,--but this had been no signal, for the lips of her friend under the long kiss had grown stiff and cold....
How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's-countenance of Night, did the cutting of this thought pass through Fixlein's warm soul: "O thou forsaken one beside me! No happy accident, no twilight hast thou, like that now glimmering in the heavens, to point to the prospect of a sunny day; without parents art thou, without brother, without friend; here alone on a disblossomed, emptied corner of the Earth; and thou, left Harvest-flower, must wave lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of the Past." That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words were: "Poor young lady! Not so much as a half-cousin left; no nobleman will seek her, and she grows old so forgotten, and she is so good from the very heart,--Me she has made happy,--Ah, had I the presentation to the parish of Hukelum in my pocket, I should make a trial." ... Their mutual lives, which a straitcutting bond of Destiny was binding so closely together, now rose before him overhung with sable,--and he forthwith conducted his friend (for a bashful man may in an hour and a half be transformed into the boldest, and then continues so) back to the last flask, that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of sorrow might therewith be swept away. I remark, in passing, that this was stupid; the torn vine is full of water-veins as well as grapes; and a soft oppressed heart the beverage of joy can melt only into tears.
If any man disagree with me, I shall desire him to look at the Conrector, who demonstrates my experimental maxim like a very syllogism.--One might arrive at some philosophic views, if one traced out the causes, why liquors--that is to say, in the long run, more plentiful secretion of the nervous spirits--make men at once pious, soft, and poetical. The Poet, like Apollo his father, isforever a youth; and is, what other men are only once, namely, in love,--or only after Pontac, namely, intoxicated,--all his life long. Fixlein, who had been no poet in the morning, now became one at night; wine made him pious and soft; the Harmonica-bells in man, which sound to the tones of a higher world, must, like the glass Harmonica-bells, if they are to act, be keptmoist.
He was now standing with her again beside the wavering pond, in which the second blue hemisphere of heaven, with dancing stars and amid quivering trees, was playing; over the green hills ran the white, crooked footpaths dimly along; on the one mountain was the twilight sinking together, on the other was the mist of night rising up; and over all these vapors of life hung motionless and naming the thousand-armed lustre of the starry heaven, and every arm held in it a burning galaxy....
It now struck eleven.... Amid such scenes, an unknown hand stretches itself out in man, and writes in foreign language on his heart, a dreadMene Mene Tekel Upharsin. "Perhaps by twelve I am dead," thought our friend, in whose soul the Cantata-Sunday, with all its black funeral piles, was mounting up.
The whole future Crucifixion of his friend lay prickly and bethorned before him; and he saw every bloody trace from which she lifted her foot,--she who had made his own way soft with flowers and leaves. He could no longer restrain himself; trembling in his whole frame, and with a trembling voice, he solemnly said to her: "If the Lord this night call me away, let the half of my fortune be yours; for it is your goodness I must thank that I am free of debts, as few Teachers are."
Thiennette, unacquainted with our sex, naturally mistook this speech for a proposal of marriage; and the fingers of her wounded arm to-night for the first time pressed suddenly against the arm in which they lay; the only living mortal's arm by which Joy, Love, and the Earth were still united with her bosom. The Conrector, rapturously terrified at the first pressure of a female hand, bent over his right to take hold of her left; and Thiennette, observing his unsuccessful movement, lifted her fingers, and laid her whole wounded arm in his, and her whole left hand in his right. Two lovers dwell in the Whispering-gallery,[51]where the faintest breath bodies itself forth into a sound. The good Conrector received and returned this blissful love-pressure, wherewith our poor, powerless soul, stammering, hemmed in, longing, distracted, seeks for a warmer language, which exists not; he was overpowered; he had not the courage to look at her; but he looked into the gleam of the twilight, and said (and here for unspeakable love the tears were running warm over his cheeks): "Ah, I will give you all; fortune, life, and all that I have, my heart and my hand."
She was about to answer, but, casting a side glance, she cried, with a shriek: "Ah, Heaven!" He started round, and perceived the white muslin sleeve all dyed with blood; for in putting her arm into his, she had pushed away the bandage from the open vein. With the speed of lightning, he hurried her into the acacia-grove; the blood was already running from the muslin; he grew paler than she, for every drop of it was coming from his heart. The blue-white arm was bared; the bandage was put on: he tore a piece of gold from his pocket; clapped it, as one does with open arteries, on the spouting fountain, and bolted with this golden bar, and with the bandage over it, the door out of which her afflicted life was hurrying.--
When it was over, she looked up to him; pale, languid, but her eyes were two glistening fountains of an unspeakable love, full of sorrow and full of gratitude.--The exhausting loss of blood was spreading her soul asunder in sighs. Thiennette was dissolved into inexpressible softness; and the heart lacerated by so many years, by so many arrows, was plunging with all its wounds in warm streams of tears, to be healed, as chapped flutes close together by lying in water, and get back their tones. Before such a magic form, before such a pure, heavenly love, her sympathizing friend was melted between the flames of joy and grief; and sank, with stifled voice, and bent down by love and rapture, on the pale, angelic face, the lips of which he timidly pressed, but did not kiss, till all-powerful Love bound its girdles round them, and drew the two closer and closer together, and their two souls, like two tears, melted into one. O now, when it struck twelve, the hour of death, did not the lover fancy that her lips were drawing his soul away, and all the fibres and all the nerves of his life closed spasmodically round the last heart in this world, round the last rapture of existence.... Yes, happy man, thou didst express thy love; for in thy love thou thoughtest to die....
However, he did not die. After midnight, there floated a balmy morning air through the shaken flowers, and the whole spring was breathing. The blissful lover, setting bounds even to his sea of joy, reminded his delicate beloved, who was now his bride, of the dangers from night-cold; and himself of the longer night-cold of Death, which was now for long years passed over.--Innocent and blessed, they rose from the grove of their betrothment, from its dust broken by white acacia-flowers and straggling moonbeams. And without, they felt as if a whole wide Past had sunk away in a convulsion of the world; all was new, light, and young. The sky stood full of glittering dew-drops from the everlasting Morning; and the stars quivered joyfully asunder, and sank, resolved into beams, down into the hearts of men.--The Moon, with her fountain of light, had overspread and kindled all the garden, and was hanging above in a starless blue, as if she had consumed the nearest stars; and she seemed like a smaller wandering Spring, like a Christ's-face smiling in love of man.--
Under this light they looked at one another for the first time after the first words of love; and the sky gleamed magically down on the disordered features with which the first rapture of love was still standing written on their faces....
Dream, ye beloved, as ye wake, happy as in Paradise, innocent as in Paradise!