This night was succeeded by days, whose radiance and joy exceeded even the far famed happiness of the honeymoon. And in fact many drops of gall had mingled with the honey of our lovers' first days of wedlock; the daughter's sorrowful parting from her beloved father, whose future at that time seemed far more lonely and joyless, because there was not the faintest thought of a marriage with his first love; the young wife's many household cares, and for Edwin himself numerous annoyances in his new position, where the reputation of being a philosopher who believes neither in religion nor in God, had preceded him.
They had passed honestly through all troubles hand in hand. But much as these trials aided in strengthening the foundation upon which their home was to be built, the happy rapture of joy, the unrestrained, tumultuous delight with which young couples usually enter upon a new life, had been lacking in them. Now all this was bestowed in overflowing measure, when as Leah smilingly said, "they had really been married too long to be so childishly happy."
True, they did not allow, the outside world to see much of the treasure they had so suddenly found under their own hearthstone, and he who had entered the sitting room on the following day would hardly have taken the quiet young teacher, who was writing the first chapter of his philosophical work, and the young wife, who was painting a study in water colors from a bouquet of fresh roses, for two newly married people, in whose hearts amazement at all the wonders of happy love was still burning with a bright flame. But the first chapter did not progress very rapidly, or the bouquet bloom speedily on the paper. Every ten minutes the writer had something to ask the artist, and the question generally concerned some childish folly, such as is usually discussed gravely and thoroughly only in the nursery; or the artist, who had gone out of the room a moment, could not as usual, on returning, find the way directly back to her own window, but being obliged to pass the other, her dress, with all its appurtenances would catch on something which was no rose bush, but two arms extended toward her like a sign post, that would not let her go until she had paid a suitable toll for crossing the boundary line.
"Since we have discovered that we are in love with each other, like ordinary foolish mortals, we can no longer abide within the same four walls!" said Edwin laughing. "It is fortunate that we shall soon need a larger dwelling at any rate. At least the neighbors will not notice it, if we, from pure love, cannot continue beside each other."
He threw his pen aside, gave his arm to his little wife, and went to the printers with her. Reginchen received them with eyes sparkling with delight, but Reinhold, after yesterday's rare expenditure of eloquence, was as monosyllabic as if he were compelled to make up for his unprecedented lavishness by redoubled parsimony. But the quiet smile that gleamed through his bushy beard was enough to tell his friends how the sun of their happiness warmed his heart. They must come again in the evening he said; but Edwin instantly declined--they were going into the country, or to the shooting match, or somewhere--in short, they did not know what wise or foolish thing they might undertake, but two such frivolous young people could not enter into any positive engagement.
The remainder of this last week of vacation passed in the same way. They were only seen for very short periods, when they talked in a courteous, but abstracted manner, smiled at vacancy, and suddenly departed again, as if they had some important business to transact, and at hours when no staid citizen would think of going to walk, would be met on the wall of the town or in the neighboring forest, strolling along hand in hand, or sitting on some bench engaged in eager conversation or absorbed in happy silence.
Yet despite all this, the first chapter did make considerable progress--more than the picture of the bouquet of roses, since the original of the latter did not expand so quietly as Edwin's thoughts, which had long before been bound into a beautiful wreath. "I know now," said he, "why I never could write the book before. Certain things cannot be done by reason and calm judgment. A hazardous enterprise, like the final expression of thought, can be undertaken only when, like a somnambulist, we wander over the heights of life, intoxicated by the winged flight of a rapturous happiness, or the march of a grand, solemn fate, with a courage which helps us to surmount all heights and depths. No can can be so bold, except he who has shaken off all the burdens of mortality and escaped into eternity. When I woke last night, my darling, and gazed at your sleeping face--the moon was still shining brightly--you had a saucy smile on your lips, while your grave brow--will you believe, that a light suddenly dawned upon that passage in Kant, over which I have racked my brains so long? now my third chapter need not end with an interrogation point."
Thus passed the bright time of this most cloudless summer. On Sunday, the last day of vacation, they walked to a neighboring village and passed the little church, just as the service was over. A flood of melody from the organ floated solemnly through the open door, like an invisible stream, which was bearing the church-goers into the world again. The two lovers stood still and let the congregation pass slowly by. A portion of it was composed of peasants with their wives and children. Many residents of the city, who were spending the summer in the country, had joined it, principally ladies, who nodded to Leah as they passed, but owing to the religious views which the pair were known to entertain, did not approach them at the moment.
"The pastor of this village is famed for his toleration and oratorical talent," said Leah. "Does it not seem as if all these faces bore witness, that a beautiful and noble gospel has just been preached, a religion of love and charity? How differently the people look, when they come from our city church, where your zealous opponent enters the pulpit every Sunday with a heart full of hatred and desire for persecution! These people have really been benefited; they have sanctified their holiday, and we ought to thank them for secretly pitying us, because they do not suspect we are doing so too, in our own way."
"Certainly," replied Edwin, "so long as they confine themselves to secret pity, and do not allow their acts to be affected by it, so long as they do not force upon us the consciousness that we have other wants and satisfy them in a different way. For after all the ultimate and most common standard of a man's value is, whether he is capable of devotion or not, whether he can raise his thoughts above the dust of workday life and produce and worthily enjoy a holiday stillness. In this alone men differ and foolishly wrangle about how it happens. Those who only in dense crowds can succeed in remembering their common humanity, their universal weakness, their need, and all that binds them under the universal law, consider those persons arrogant and presumptuous, who can only feel the presence of the eternal powers, when communing with their own hearts in the deepest solitude, or with their most intimate friends. Nothing alien and fortuitous must touch me, if I am to approach what people have agreed to call God. The voice of a good man, who wants to obtrude upon me his little well meant passages from Scripture, the faces of his innocent hearers, to whom each word is a revelation, baffle and destroy my best efforts to rise above earthly appearances into the one and all. That which now speaks to us from the open house of God, is a feeling so strangely made up of memories of our childhood, universal philanthropy, the summer air, and the notes of the organ, that we gladly allow it to produce its effect upon us. But when we seriously reflect, it leads us away from, rather than into ourselves. It draws us toward natures which have little in common with us. We have often said, dearest, that mankind might be divided into two great classes, those who strive toward what is steadfast, calm, and limited, and those who never forget that every thing is fleeting, and are only satisfied when they themselves are in the current of the eternal stream. How could the piety of these two classes be the same? When the former pass from the restless, ever moving world, through a church door into their Sunday, where every thing has remained the same from time immemorial, the inexpressible appears before them confined within set forms, and for all new wants and sorrows the same consolations are ready, which have soothed their ancestors for a thousand years. How can it surprise us, that people who find their salvation in remaining ever the same and prefer to stifle certain instincts of the soul and mind, rather than be allured into the illimitable, cannot understand us, whose piety is rooted in the strength and boldness which in moments of enthusiasm, enable us to burst the barriers that confine us, in order through presentments and intuition, to grasp all space?"
"They do not know," said Leah gently, after a short pause, "how much more courage and humility it requires, to confess that we cannot recognize God, then to believe ourselves his pet children, in whose ears He whispers the secret of the world, and thereby relieves from all future care."
When they returned home in the evening and entered their cosy room, they espied a letter lying on the desk. "I don't know why it is," said Edwin, "but I fear this stranger which has crept in, will destroy the pleasure of the last hours of vacation."
"Don't read it until to-morrow," pleaded Leah.
But Edwin had already opened the letter, and a smaller note fell out. As Leah picked it up, he glanced at the signature of the large one. "Doctor Basler," he read, and his light tone instantly grew sad. "A letter from there--six closely written pages--strange, how far distant it seems, all that transpired there, as if years had intervened; so greatly does happiness harden us to the sorrows of others! And now once more it appears like yesterday. Poor creature, to be so quickly forgotten, even by your only friend! Perhaps though it may not contain a word about her. Come we will sit down on the sofa and read the letter together."
Leah had become perfectly silent. Without exactly concealing the note she had picked up, she held it in her hand, so that for the instant Edwin forgot it. They seated themselves near the lamp and read:
"Dear Sir and Friend!
"I should consider it my duty, even without the count's express command, to relate to my dear friend's son, the particulars of an event extremely sad in its nature, and which if it should reach him in its bare outlines through the medium of the press, would be doubly agitating.
"So--sine ambagibus--for so-called preparation in such cases only increases anxiety and dread, and men, dear Herr Doctor, know that fate strides rapidly--we have lost our beautiful young mistress, the countess, in a manner as sudden as it is distressing.
"You are already aware, that the writer of this letter did not enjoy any special favor or regard from the lady who has died so young. Yet I do not need to assure you, that the brevity of this account, which is garnished by no expression of feeling, is due solely to the haste imposed upon me by the pressure of circumstances, and not by any lack of sympathy in my master's misfortune. Such a thing would not only be inhuman in general, but ungrateful in particular, in so far as the noble lady at last did justice to the good will of her faithful servant and honored him with a priceless token of her confidence.
"To tell everything in due order, the countess, during the first few days after you left us, made no change in her mode of life, but on the third or fourth day--Monday, if I am not mistaken--remained shut up in her own room, allowing no one but her maid to attend her. On Thursday she again appeared at dinner, and to her husband's evident joy, seemed gayer and more cordial than was her habit in the family circle. The Italian tour of the prince and his wife, introduced the subject of traveling, and the countess jestingly remarked that she had become, so to speak, blaséthrough descriptions of travel in most foreign countries, but if any thing could please her, it would be to go alone to the promised land. This remark was taken seriously, both by Count Gaston and the count himself, and the following day nothing was talked of except rides through the desert, Jordan water, the infidels, and the holy sepulchre. Therefore it afforded me special pleasure, that the countess should be the first to say: 'of course we must not leave the doctor--my insignificant self--at home.'
"Amid all this, it could not escape one familiar with the circumstances, that the noble lady's feelings toward her husband had softened, a fact which I could not help secretly attributing to your influence, my worthy friend. Old diagnosticians, like ourselves, are not deceived in such matters; the tone of the voice and the expression of the eyes, which accompanied even the most insignificant words, plainly showed me that her former harshness was softening, and I was already cherishing the brightest expectations of a complete reconciliation, expectations now unfortunately forever baffled, by this terrible catastrophe.
"A hunting party was arranged for Thursday, at which in addition to the members of the household, no one was present except the barons Thaddäus and Matthäus, who, however, were only spectators, as, since the accident to the fat landed-proprietor, though the wound is healing, the furrow made by the ball suppurating properly, and his general health admirable, they have vowed not to touch a gun, except in defence of their native land.
"I, as usual, remained at home, and did not even see the party ride away, but learned from the steward that Her Excellency had been particularly gay and blooming, and in unusually good spirits, so that the count really seemed to grow younger and the company moved off amid jests and laughter.
"The occupants of the castle were therefore the more alarmed, when, soon after noon, the noble party entered the courtyard very quietly at a walk, the countess lying in a carriage with a very pale face. Count Gaston riding beside her on horseback, and her husband on the box. We heard, that in the exuberance of her delight in hunting, Her Excellency had proposed a steeplechase to the gentlemen, in which her English chestnut horse instantly took the lead; but in leaping a high fence the animal unfortunately fell, and though the countess was apparently unhurt, the fright brought on a long fainting fit. The horse, which had broken one of its fore legs, was instantly relieved from its sufferings by a bullet from Count Gaston's pistol, at the express desire of its mistress, who, however, as soon as the deed was done, burst into violent sobs and afterwards did not utter a single word.
"Leaning on her husband's arm, she ascended the stairs, greeting the terrified servants only with a silent bend of the head and went at once to her own rooms, where she shut herself up for several hours, declaring that she was not hurt, and that she only needed rest. It was not a matter of surprise, that she did not consult me, as I have already told you, I was not in her favor, either as a physician or as a man. But to my no small surprise, about six o'clock I was called to the noble patient by the maid herself.
"I found her attired in an elegantnegligé,sitting at a writing table, as if nothing had happened; she was unusually pale however, and her manner of receiving me was also surprising, for she was not in the habit of treating me with so much kindness and condescension. While sealing a letter and writing the address with a steady hand, she said in reply to my question about her health, that she was sure she had received no internal injury, but the dizziness which had recently attacked her--you remember how she stumbled the morning after your arrival, my dear sir--constantly hovered about her, and she wanted me to bleed her. At first I hesitated, from scientific reasons, which it would occupy too much space to explain here; but as I knew her, and knew that if I refused, she would send for the village barber, I did what she desired; it was the first time I had been permitted to touch her arm or render her any medical service. 'What do you think of my blood, Doctor?' she said, as it flowed into the silver basin. 'It is healthy isn't it? With such blood one might live to be a hundred years old!'
"When I put on the bandage, she expressly told me to fasten it securely, she was often restless in her sleep she said, and it might, easily become displaced. 'Well,' said I, 'in any case I will beg permission to watch through the night with the maid in the ante-room.' 'If you want me not to close my eyes,' she replied, 'my nerves are so irritated, that the slightest noise, even the mere vicinity of a man, keeps me awake.' No, if I wished to do her a favor, I would not omit the ride to the city I always took every Thursday, and I would carry with me to mail, the letter she had just written.
"You knew her, dear Herr Doctor, and therefore you know how difficult it would have been to have refused her any thing, especially a first service. So I bowed in silence, put the letter in my pocket, and gave her all sorts of directions for the night. Then she held out her hand, which I respectfully kissed, and at that moment it seemed as if no ill feeling had ever existed between us. 'Goodnight, dear Doctor'--those were the last words I ever heard her utter.
"In the hall below I met the count, who asked how I had found her. I told him, and also said I was going to the city--but did not mention the letter(although my motto has always been 'frankness and honesty,' there are cases where discretion becomes a duty.)The count positively forbade me to ride to the city. If the countess asked about the matter in the morning, he would be responsible for my disobedience. Then he went to her himself remained in her apartments about half an hour and returned in a mood I had scarcely ever remarked in him before--gentle and kind, as if he felt all would now be well. Dear me it was the first time for years, that he had been allowed to sit by her bedside for half an hour.
"Then night closed in. No one in the castle noticed anything unusual, the supper was a little more quiet, and there was no card playing afterwards, which greatly vexed the chevalier, who does not know how to amuse himself without it. At eleven the count again sent to inquire about his wife's health; the maid, who was to spend the night on the sofa in the adjoining room, replied that the countess seemed to be asleep, and she could not get in. Her Excellency had locked the door.
"So all went to bed. What was to be feared? The symptoms were not alarming; rest, sleep, and a Utile bleeding could only be beneficial.
"But I was roused from, my sleep at five o'clock in the morning by the maid, who was standing beside my bed. I must come up at once, she had been aroused by a strange moan, had knocked at the countess' door and called her and at last with the help of a servant, burst the lock; there lay the poor countess weltering in her blood, with the bandage stripped from her arm, unconscious but still alive.
"Dear friend, you may suppose that our trade hardens us, but such a sight!--the count like a madman--the grief of the whole household--and I stood by, whose duty it was to help, and saw that all was useless!
"Had I not been convinced that the bandage--but why should I speak of that--the change in her feelings for the previous few days, instantly removed the supposition that otherwise might have arisen--besides no amount of reasoning can restore her to life.
"Suddenly I thought of the letter, which I still had in my pocket, and I told the count about it, for all discretion was then superfluous. He hastily seized it, for a moment I thought he would open it to see if it contained any intimation that--but then he read the address aloud and was gentleman enough to return it to me; 'take care of it,' said he, 'and write him about--' here his voice failed, and he sank down in a chair beside the bed of his beautiful dead wife.
"Here is the letter entrusted to me; I feel sure it will furnish no new disclosures, none that could be new to me. I know what I know, and voices from the grave even, could not change my conviction.
"I have been very prolix, but you, as an intimate friend of the departed, will not find these details too minute. Remember me to your honored wife; I regret that there is so little prospect of a continuance of our recent acquaintanceship, but the count leaves in a few days for the East, and I accompany him. So with sincere regards, my dear friend, I remain,
"Yours
"Dr. Basler.
"Address to the castle as before; all correspondence will be forwarded!"
The note enclosed in the doctor's letter ran as follows:
"You will be alarmed, my dear friend, that I already write you again. But fear nothing, it is for the last time, and means little more than the card inscribed P. P. C. which we leave with our friends before a long separation, I am going away on a journey, dear friend, far enough away to enable you to feel perfectly secure from any molestation on my part. How this has come about is a long story. Suffice it to say, that it is not envy of the laurels won by my beautiful fair-haired sister-in-law--Imean those she will undoubtedly win as a high-born, intellectual, and pious traveler--that induces me also to seek a change of air. If that which I breathe were but conducive to my health, if I could but sleep and wake, laugh and weep like other men and women, I certainly would not stir from the spot. But even my worst enemy could hardly fail to understand that matters can not go on any longer as they are; so I prefer to go. The 'promised land' has long allured me. I should have set out for it before, if I had not had much to expect, to hope, and to wait for, and been hindered by a multitude, as I now see, of very superfluous scruples, which are at least successfully conquered.
"Do you know that since I saw you I have made the acquaintance of your dear wife? A very, very pleasant acquaintance; if I had only made it a few years sooner, it might have been very useful to me. Well, even now it is not too late to rejoice, that you have what you need, the happiness you desire, in such a noble, wise, and loving life companion. Give my kindest remembrances to her. In my incognito I may have behaved strangely. But the idea of assuming it flashed upon me so suddenly, and, with the help of my faithful maid, it was carried so quickly into execution, that I had no time to consider what rôle I should play. So every thing was done on the spur of the moment. To be sure, I had at first a vague idea of proposing that you should accompany me on the great journey. But one glance into your home quickly told me, that you must be happiest there, that your 'promised land' is the room, where your desk and the artist table of your wife stand so quietly and peacefully side by side.
"Farewell, 'dear friend!' I should like to talk with you still longer--to philosophize as we used to call it; but what would be the use? Or has any sage ever given a satisfactory answer to the question, of how the commandment that the sins of the fathers must be visited on the children, can be made to harmonize with the idea of a just government of the world? Why should a freak of nature, an abnormal creation, be expected to fulfil all the grave normal demands we are justified in making upon ordinary human beings? Or why are we usually punished by the gratification of our wishes, and allowed to perceive what we ought to have desired, only when it cannot be attained?
"A fool, you know, can propound more questions than ten philosophers can answer. Perhaps I shall receive special enlightenment in the 'promised land.' My memory is stored with much that is beautiful; even many a trial that I have experienced in the grey twilight of this strange, cold, inhospitable world, was not borne wholly without recompense. I would not give up even my sorrows, for the dull happiness of commonplace wiseacres, who in their limited sphere think all things perfectly natural and cling closely to their clod.
"Farewell, my dear friend. Let me hope that you will always wherever I may be, remember me with as much sympathy as the great and pure happiness you enjoy will allow, and that you will wish a pleasant journey to
"Toinette."
Two winters and two summers have passed since the evening when the honeymoon happiness of the newly united pair was so deeply shadowed. The blow, however, left very different traces on each. While Edwin, after the first sudden pang, almost felt a satisfaction in knowing that the sad confusion of this noble life was ended by a heroic death, Leah was assailed by a strange melancholy, which caused her constantly to reflect whether she herself was not partly to blame for this terrible death. If she had not stood between them, if, in that first and only interview, she had treated the well known stranger differently,--! And again, even if the living woman would have had no further power over Edwin's heart, how the image of this wonderful creature, who had turned away from a lost life with such calm dignity now transfigured by death, must haunt his memory and overshadow every bodily form. Then a secret pride rebelled against the thought, that this voluntary departure might have been a favor bestowed upon, a sacrifice made forher; as if the generous Toinette had said to herself: "so long as I breathe, this woman cannot be sure of her happiness and peace; one of us must step aside."
She carefully concealed this restless succession of thoughts from Edwin, and as his profession and the now steady labor on his book gave him enough to do, he did not continually watch Leah, and attributed certain dark moods, which did not wholly escape his notice, to her changed condition and the anxiety natural to one about for the first time to become a mother. In fact, the fulfilment of this most ardent wish appeared to instantly transform her nature, and when the child lay in its cradle, all shadows of the past seemed driven from the house by perpetual sunlight. Thus a second year passed away.
When we again meet our friends it is once more vacation; but this time we do not find them among mountains and valleys, or within the cosy precincts of their new home. Leah, with pardonable maternal pride, unable to resist her own desires and the pressing invitation of her parents, has taken her rosy little girl, "who is already so sensible and gives no trouble at all," with her to Berlin. They arrived yesterday evening at the pretty little house in the Thiergarten suburb, where papa König, since he left the lagune, has built his modest but comfortable nest. Here, amid the green trees and under the care of his faithful companion, the old gentleman has fairly blossomed again, and the pleasure of embracing his daughter and grandchild has even made him strip off the chains, with which in the shape of cloths, bandages, and felt shoes, the gout usually makes his feet helpless. He came running up to the carriage, far in advance of his much more active and still charming wife, and would not be prevented from carrying the sleeping infant, with all its pillows and wrappings through the garden into the house, and then the rest of the day ran up and down stairs unweariedly, to ask for the hundredth time if the children were comfortable and wanted nothing, though his clever wife had provided every thing in the most loving manner. "Oh! it is so pleasant to come home again," Leah exclaimed, her eyes full of tears, and with grateful affection threw herself into the arms of the new mother, whom she had secretly dreaded to meet.
Edwin was also very gay. Meeting with these excellent people had done him good. But in the depths of his soul there still lingered a gentle melancholy, a quiet depression, which even the following morning, with all its sunlight and the twittering of the birds before the windows, could not dispel. Leah instantly understood his feelings, when, without waiting for the early breakfast, he prepared to go out.
"Go, dearest," she said. "It must be done. I would accompany you, but the baby is not yet dressed. Remember me to all."
She kissed him and waving her hand, looked after him as he walked through the garden into the park. She knew that he would have no rest, until he had revisited the places around which his dearest memories clustered. He did not, however, as she anticipated, first turn his steps toward the cemetery where Balder reposed. He had not even taken any special interest in adorning the grave or providing a headstone, and when long ago Leah had asked him about the inscription--her father had quietly attended to every thing else--he had looked at her with an almost bewildered expression, and merely replied: "whatever you think best will suit me entirely," and then he had not gone there again. He confessed that his dead never seemed farther from him, than when he was near their graves, where he had never seen them while alive, and that the beloved images there paled to shadows among other shadows. But now, when in the quiet morning sunlight, he wandered across the deserted Thiergarten, it suddenly seemed even in broad daylight, as if a glorified spirit, that wore Balder's features, were walking close beside him, till he closed his eyes in order not to destroy the waking dream. All the events of the past, all the love and pleasure of their young lives together crowded upon his mind, and as he involuntarily stretched out his hand, for one moment he actually again experienced the feeling he had had in former days, when he had gently stroked his brother's soft hair.
Absorbed in these thoughts, he reached the neighborhood where the park stopped and where new streets and houses, which had sprung from the ground as if by magic, reminded him how many years he had been away. He knew that Marquard lived here, nay he even fancied that at one of the lofty windows, supported by caryatides, he recognized a face which reminded him of Adèle.
He turned away, that he might not be recognized. He did not desire to meet old acquaintances this first morning. He soon reached the bank of the Spree, turned to the right, and walked down along the quay, watching the sparkling water. He thought how strange it was, that the only thing in which he perceived no alteration, was that which was constantly moving. While the firm brick and mortar had not resisted the inroads of time, and house after house seemed to have been renovated, the old Spree, on the contrary, showed the same face, the floating houses on it had kept the form and color, and their occupants the costume and customs they had had on the day, when with the little artist, he first made his Canaletto studies.
He knew that he would find new buildings erected over the lagune and on the site of the Venetian palace, and yet something attracted him first to this part of the Schiffbauerdamm. But when he approached the spot and saw every trace of the old scene effaced, a wide gateway in place of the canal, and on the timber yard a tall, sombre building with glittering windows, he stood still, overpowered by a sudden emotion of sadness, and feeling as if he had found, on visiting the spot where he had buried a treasure only a heap of valueless stones. Then he could not help smiling at the vehemence of his feeling. "So it is that we cling to tangible things!" he said to himself. "We may fancy ourselves ever so secure in our idealism, the senses demand their share. What was this wretched old barrack to me! And now, since I can no longer see it with my bodily eyes, I feel as if barbarians had ransacked a temple which contained the most beautiful images and where I had often been disposed to devotion."
He slowly turned toward Friedrichstrasse, intending to go to the house in Dorotheenstrasse, look around the old "tun," and then deliver the messages Reginchen and Franzelius had sent to their mother. They could send no remembrances to the father; the worthy shoemaker was no longer among the living. The last autumn had torn this modest leaf from the tree of humanity, before it showed any signs of withering. The latter part of his life, in which, following Heinrich Mohr's counsel, he had eagerly striven for progress in his own sphere of action and studied the questions relating to the culture of humanity in the closest proximity, had been the most enjoyable and richest of his life. To be sure, he was at first very angry that "mother" could not be induced to accompany him on his journeys of discovery through Berlin. But by degrees he seemed to become reconciled to this obstinacy, nay he confessed to his friends in the society, that the full depths of certain abysses of modern civilization can be measured only when men venture into them "without ladies." As he talked continually about these "abysses," certain wags endeavored to persuade him to deliver a lecture upon them. For a long time he modestly refused, but at last consented, and to the great astonishment of his faithful wife, who saw her husband become an author in his old age, he spent many weeks in filling a few sheets with extremely strange, extraordinarily worded sentences, in which he forgot eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, and even his workshop, but was as happy as a student composing his first love song in honor of a lady, to whom he had never spoken a word. When he delivered this wonderful composition, under the title of "studies of social abysses," before one of the informal meetings, as a sort of rehearsal, he was rewarded for his trouble by great and universal merriment, a form of applause, which as he had scattered through it the spice of a few puns and anecdotes, seemed very flattering. To be sure, the president, for very plausible reasons, did not think the subject of the lecture judicious for a large audience, but thanked the assiduous shoe-maker in the warmest manner for the interesting communication, so that the old man, in an exalted mood which he had never experienced before, ordered champagne, and broke the neck of more than one bottle to the welfare of progress and the education of the people.
The following morning he was found dead in his bed from a stroke of apoplexy, a triumphant smile still resting on his lips, which seemed to ask the survivors whether his being so suddenly snatched away, when a wider influence seemed about to be allotted to him, might not perhaps have been destined to show that he possessed more than mediocre ability.
But Edwin was not thinking of this worthy friend, as he walked down the long street, and plucking up his courage, turned the corner. Here the narrow little house with the steep roof and bright flesh colored paint had formerly appeared at a distance. To-day--what has happened, that his eyes at first failed to distinguish it? Had it been unwilling to outlast its old master? No, it was still standing in its place, but its appearance was completely transformed. The cheerful pink paint, which contrasted too strongly with the feelings of its present owner, had disappeared under a gloomy stone grey, with black stripes, so that it seemed to be in mourning for its old master. The sign over the shop door had been altered also, for a melancholy change had taken place in the firm, whose name now read as follows: "Gottfried Feyertag's Widow & Co.," which appendix of course meant none other than George, the head journeyman.
All the windows on the first floor were wide open. In former days such a thing had never been known to happen even in midsummer. But the little old couple had left this peaceful dwelling several years ago, to occupy that still more quiet last lodging, where protected from every draught of air, we rest on our earthly laurels. Edwin had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with these fellow lodgers, yet he now felt as if they too had been a necessary part of his life, and that not to find them again would be a real sorrow.
He approached the house with hesitating feet, ascended the few door steps and went into the entry. Through the glass panes of the inner door he could look into the shop, where Madame Feyertag, completely attired in black with a large crèpe cap, sat in the corner behind the show case, sewing. He could not make up his mind to enter and deliver Reginchen's message; an iron band seemed to compress his chest, he feared that he should be unable to control his words. He glided cautiously past with noiseless steps and opened the door leading into the courtyard. He had intended to go up to the tun, an uncontrollable longing drew him toward the old room. Every thing here was the same; the bare, grey back building, the arbor overgrown with bean vines, the shade loving plants, the acacia tree, which it is true was now wholly dead, and did not even put forth one puny leaf--but what was that lying among the dry branches like a little heap of last winter's snow? A cat? Was it she herself, Balder's old friend, sunning her weary limbs on this lofty perch, or was it a descendant, which bore such a striking resemblance to its ancestress? He could not decide, his eyes grew dim with tears and his feet seemed paralysed; in spite of his longing, he could not cross the courtyard and mount the steep stairs. So he stood leaning against the door post with closed eyes. Just at that moment voices became audible in the workshop, and starting as if he feared to be caught here like a thief, he tore himself away and with a beating heart fled back into the street.
For a long time he walked on like a drunken man. He took no heed of the people who passed by, the glittering shops, the throng of carriages, the motley stir and bustle of life around him. But by degrees the painful agitation of his soul subsided, isolated words recurred to his mind involuntarily blended together, before he remembered that they composed an old song of Balder's, which suddenly echoed from the depths of his memory and soothed him with its mysterious magic:
Soul how thou roamest!On wings of the wind,Through high and through low,Thy way thou dost find.Though thou art poor,What riches are thine!Ceaselessly restlessWhat calmness divine!Free above all,Close, close thou art bound;Soul, say, where hast thouThy resting place found?Among stars and suns,Thy wing circleth wide,Yet with rapture,Mid violet beds doth abide.Where the lightning is cradledThy home thou hast made;To the cloud's ample dwellingAs well hast thou strayed.Yet in narrowest circle,By joy art possessed,And dost tenderly, timidlyPensively rest.As the ivy that creepethBy lowly abodes,On a thousand weak tendrilsThou climb'st to the Gods.Where memory glancingThe cleft ruins through,As the sun to the vineGiveth warm life anew.
Soul how thou roamest!On wings of the wind,Through high and through low,Thy way thou dost find.
Though thou art poor,What riches are thine!Ceaselessly restlessWhat calmness divine!
Free above all,Close, close thou art bound;Soul, say, where hast thouThy resting place found?
Among stars and suns,Thy wing circleth wide,Yet with rapture,Mid violet beds doth abide.
Where the lightning is cradledThy home thou hast made;To the cloud's ample dwellingAs well hast thou strayed.
Yet in narrowest circle,By joy art possessed,And dost tenderly, timidlyPensively rest.
As the ivy that creepethBy lowly abodes,On a thousand weak tendrilsThou climb'st to the Gods.
Where memory glancingThe cleft ruins through,As the sun to the vineGiveth warm life anew.
Murmuring the last words aloud just as he turned into the Unter den Linden, he suddenly felt his arm seized, and turning saw a face which had been far from his thoughts.
The old Livonian baron, the enthusiastic connoisseur and friend of art, who had formerly helped the worthy zaunkönig to his short-lived dignity of court painter, stood before him wearing an expression of the greatest delight.
"Well," he cried, shaking Edwin's hand with boyish impetuosity, "this is what I call 'talking of a wolf and seeing the tip of his tail.' Only yesterday evening I was speaking of you for at least two hours, first condemning and then defending you when others undertook to condemn; and to-day, my dear fellow, you appear before me just as I was considering whether I should go to your father-in-law, to get your address; you see I wanted to write to you. I don't know how the worthy Herr Zaunkönig feels toward me, since that stupid piece of business; for gloriously as he behaved in the matter, just as I expected him to do, I was at any rate mixed up in it, and the wager--"
"You ought to know him better, my dear Baron," said Edwin, interrupting the torrent of words. "True, he is by no means such a weak dove as not to have been very much enraged against your prince at the first moment of discovery, but it was less from offended personal dignity, than indignation at the cold blooded frivolity, with which such noble Mæcenas' treat an insignificant artist. But then he grew quiet and thoughtful, collected his studies and the few pictures he had finished, and spread them before him. When I asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I am disgusting myself with my work. Let us be just: these things have emanated from an aberration of the artistic instinct.' The next day they had disappeared, and as I afterwards learned, were nailed up in a chest, loaded with brick-bats, and sunk in the lagune."
"Oh! oh! oh!" said the old man, shaking his head, "then we have really deprived him of the greatest pleasure of his life. I shall never look at the Luini I won from the prince, without a pang of conscience. Oh! oh!"
"Cheer up, dear Baron. You have only helped to prove his favorite saying, that to those who love God all things are for the best. His passion for art really emerged again, rejuvenated and vigorous, from the lagune where he had expected to bury it. Since he has lived in the suburbs, where in spite of his new and easier circumstances, he continues his old modest mode of life and industriously pursues his engraving, he has, it is true, made no attempt to return to his former 'specialty.' He says that now, when he daily sees the green fields, he perceives for the first time the full extent of the frivolous boldness, with which he daubed these wonders of God on his miserable canvass. To make amends, since what is denied always charms the soul and excites the fancy, he has how set up a new kind ofgenrepicture; he paints views of the Spree and the green ditches, bridges, and steps leading to the water, not without skill, as it seems to me. You may suppose that he is more successful in reproducing the straight lines and grey tone, than the succulent weeds and bright sky of his former zaunkönigs. If you would come out to his house--he has just finished something--"
"Col sommo piacere!With the greatest pleasure. You take a hundred pound weight from my heart. But what was I going to say--what were we talking about just now? My head is growing old, friend, and nothing makes one more confused and forgetful, than intercourse with silent pictures."
"You were saying that you had been scolding about me yesterday for two hours. I am curious--"
"Yes, that was it: your book was the subject of conversation, everybody is talking about it now, so that I was at last ashamed of not having read it, though I don't exactly feel compelled to be familiar with all the new books that are talked about, not even those written by my friends. But, my dear fellow, what have you done?"
"Nothing very bad, I hope. At the worst only written a bad book."
"Something far worse, my friend--a good book, a book which in all main points is perfectly right and has the great majority of thinking men on its side. You laugh. Oh! these young people! You think it is easy to be in the right in this world. As if there could be any thing more repulsive, uncomfortable, and contrary to police regulations, than a person who looks neither to the right nor left, knows neither caution nor discretion, but calls things by their right names. Such a fool-hardy man had better go into the Theban wilderness and deliver his wisdom to the stones; but if he supposes that he will be tolerated in a society founded upon mutual cloaking and palliation of faults, feigned respect for rotten rubbish, and the superficial varnish coated over old cracks, where people do not even have the courage to lay aside the humbug of false names in the catalogues of museums, let alone calling other idols by their right names--you see, my friend, gall enters into the construction of my sentences, and I no longer know how I began. But this I do know, that if you acknowledge the authorship of such books, you will never have any prospect of making a career in our dear native land, and I sincerely regret it."
"I thank you for this regret," replied Edwin with a quiet smile. "Nay I even share it in a certain sense, though not on my own account! I am happy where I am, and offices and titles have as little charm for me, as a heap of money, which at any rate if I were a little more careful, I might procure by lecturing or writing. But in the interest of public welfare, the health and morality of our political life, I can only think with regret how far we still are, from possessing the much praised and much scouted freedom of thought. So long as the patriarchal delusion still exists, that the state has the right or even the duty, of watching over the theoretical opinions of its members, while only their acts belong to its tribunal, we shall not emerge from a dreamy and trifling minority. And this rests upon a deeper error, against which my whole book is directed, although it apparently turns upon an objectless pyschological problem--the error that metaphysics and morality are closely connected, nay are in a constant interchange of influence."
"Freedom of thought!" cried the eager old gentleman, standing still and baring his shinging bald head, as if his hat heated it, "as if it would be of any special consequence to you to obtain, this miserable acquisition, which you possess as much as the Spaniards themselves did in the darkest ages. What you want and will not obtain for a long time, isfreedom to teach, freedom to transplant your thoughts into other heads, not merely by books, which will only be read by a small number, but by lectures in public halls, just as your colleague instils into his hearers the condensed milk of piety carefully tested and proved harmless. But you are wrong, my dear friend, in asking this, and that is why I blamed you, because I regret that by a premature expression of your secret thoughts, you render your own work difficult, if not impossible. Dear me, the field of philosophy is so terribly barren, people would be glad to foster and cherish a new power; but if it deals such blows to the right and left, loosens with its roots the soil on which tame kitchen vegetables have hitherto peacefully slept their nourishing plant-sleep--you have too clear a head, dear Herr Doctor, not to understand that the time has not yet come when we can need you among us."
"Not yetcome, certainly, but it is near, nearer perhaps than those in high places suppose. Or how long do you think it will be, before shame at the incompleteness and artificially fostered self-deception, which is palliated by pedagogical considerations, will flush the faces of the leaders of the public, and compel them to openly acknowledge what has long since been secretly perceived and recognized? It is true that hitherto we have had other tasks to solve, questions of existence, of defence in peril, and then of our power and honor. But after we have advanced tolerably far in these, do you suppose that we, who have to support our moral dignity before other nations, will continue in this traditional track, and thereby allow the noblest intellectual possessions to be endangered? For all the canonized myths and metaphysical legends have also produced an ethical effect, not according to the measure of their truth, but by the degree of veracity in the author and hearer of the composition. And must the degree of veracity no longer be the standard of the allowableness and moral power of a lesson? Or is it not a great immorality, out of mere external considerations relating to the political education of children, to give us for the corner stone of our happiness, fairy tales and legends, which all cultivated minds believe as little, as the Greeks of Aristotle's time credited the fables of Homer and Hesiod. Of course we must not pour away the dirty water before we have fresh; but who will answer for it that we shall ever draw from the deepest, purest fountain? And who would not quench his thirst with the wild fruit that grows by the way side, rather than drink the water, which in spite of all filtering, has constantly become darker and more slimy? Oh! my dear friend, I see in your face the reply you wish to make, that the great masses are not so particular, and are satisfied with the foul stream in which weak minded theologians have washed their dirty linen for centuries, while we educated people could support ourselves on the fruits that philosophy and natural philosophy pluck from the tree of knowledge. I, too, once held the same aristocratic notions. But I can no longer reconcile myself to them. For--let alone every thing else--I do not believe that it would be dangerous for the masses, if they were educated to the truth instead of to a conventional fable, such as our histories of dogmas offer them. But even if certain village and city churches should become still more empty, than is now the case in consequence of the deadness and constantly decreasing reality in our forms of worship, has the state duties to perform only toward the uneducated? Can it, without danger, lose in the eyes of the educated that credit for veracity, which it might so easily maintain, if it did not take sides, and venture to decide questions of conscience by state institutions? Has it not also responsibilities toward the great stratabetweenthe educated and the simple people, those who will be strengthened and almost confirmed in their own frivolity by all these partly known, partly unknown things? The evil of shallowness and secularization in its worst sense existing in these circle, the preponderance of thoughtless pleasure, the whole despicable materialism of our times--do you really suppose, my friend, that all this is to be remedied by throwing up a dam composed of the crumbling ruins of a faith, which for centuries the elements have shaken, disintegrated, and scarcely left one stone upon another? I cannot believe it, even if I desired to do so, and the patching and mending of the tottering structure seems to me more wicked and dangerous, than erecting a new dam--or at least measuring and marking out the foundations, on which our children's children may put up the structure."
"Our children's children already? Oh! you sanguine mortal!"
"You are right. Who can tell? And yet how quickly intellectual transitions take place now, in comparison with former days, when the intercourse between minds was effected with so much greater difficulty! Has a century elapsed since the time when Lessing's Nathan was a fact, a challenge, a single burning need of that great heart, until now, when his timid gospel of toleration for all religions has become a commonplace, and honest toleration even of the irreligious ripened to the silent need of countless numbers?"
"I hope your book will be introduced into German seminaries, but at any rate Nathan will be turned into flesh and blood, so that a Jew may be permitted, without hesitation, to read logic and metaphysics before grown men."
"I hope the latter also," replied Edwin smiling. "The former would be a sad token of the small progress science had made in a hundred years. One of us will then I hope be a conquered station."
"No," exclaimed the old man with a solemnity which moved Edwin strangely, and seizing both his companion's hands, while he looked him steadily in the eyes, he continued: "I must tell you here, though it probably will not signify much from an old enthusiast in art, in the new building of which you speak, even though it too, after thousands of years will become mouldy and tottering, and have to be rebuilt, the foundation will remain, and among other mementoes of these days, which will deserve to be placed in the corner stone, your book will find a place. I bought it and wrote on the first page averse of the old poet enlightened by divine frenzy the poet Holderlin: