"A rustling, whisper'd singingBreaks thro' the leaves of spring,And over heart, and sense, and soulA web of love doth fling."
"A rustling, whisper'd singing
Breaks thro' the leaves of spring,
And over heart, and sense, and soul
A web of love doth fling."
And Edmund, grown less timid now that the twilight was falling more deeply, took her hand and laid it on his heart, whilst he went on, continuing the quotation--
"Did I, in whispered music, singWhat my heart hears--aright--From that sweet lay would burst, in fire,Love's own Eternal Light."
"Did I, in whispered music, sing
What my heart hears--aright--
From that sweet lay would burst, in fire,
Love's own Eternal Light."
Albertine withdrew her hand, but only to take off her glove, and then give the hand back to this lucky youngster. He was just going to kiss it fervently, when the Commissionsrath broke in with a
"Oh! I say! How chilly it's getting! I wish I had brought my great coat! Put on your shawl, Tiny! It's a fine Turkish shawl, my dear painter--cost fifty ducats. Wrap yourself up in it, Tiny; we must be getting home. Good-bye, mydearsir."
Edmund was here inspired by a happy thought. He took out his cigar case and offered the Commissionsrath a third Havannah.
"I really am excessively obliged to you," the Commissionsrath said, delighted; "you really are most kind. The police don't let one smoke walking about in the Thiergarten, for fear of the grass getting burnt; one enjoys a pipe or a cigar more for that very reason."
Bosswinkel went up to the lamp to light the cigar, and Edmund took advantage of his doing so to whisper to Albertine, very shyly, that he hoped she would let him walk home with her. She put her arm in his, they went on together, and Bosswinkel, when he joined them, seemed to consider it a matter of course that Edmund was going to walk with them all the way to town.
Anybody who has once been young, and in love--or who is both now at this present time (there are many who have never been either the one or the other)--will understand how Edmund, at Albertine's side, thought he was hovering over the tops of the trees, rather than walking through amongst them; up among the gleaming clouds, rather than down upon the earth.
Rosalind, in Shakespeare's 'As You Like It,' says that the "marks" of a man in love are "a lean cheek, a blear eye and sunken, an unquestionable spirit, a beard neglected, hose ungartered, bonnet unhanded, sleeve unbuttoned, shoe untied, and everything demonstrating a careless desolation." But those marks were as little seen in Edmund as in Orlando. Like the latter, however, who marred all the trees of the forest with carving his mistress's name on them, hung odes on the whitethorns, and elegies on the bramble-bushes, Edmund spoilt quantities of paper, parchment, canvas and colours, in besinging his beloved in verses which were wretched enough, and in drawing her, and painting her, without ever succeeding in making her in the least like--so far did his fancy soar above his capability. When to this was added the peculiar, unmistakable somnambulistic look of the love-sick, and a fitting amount of sighing at all times and seasons, it was not to be wondered at that the old goldsmith saw into his young friend's condition.
"H'm," he said; "you don't seem to think what an undesirable thing it is to fall in love with a girl who is engaged. For Albertine Bosswinkel is as good as engaged already to Tussmann, the Clerk of the Privy Chancery."
This terrible piece of news sent Edmund into the wildest despair. Leonhard waited patiently till the first paroxysm was past, and then asked if he really wanted to marry Albertine. Edmund declared that was the dearest wish of his heart, and implored the goldsmith to help him as much as ever he could to beat Tussmann out of the field, and win the lovely lady himself.
What the goldsmith thought and said was that a young artist might fall in love as much as ever he liked, but to marry straight away was a very different affair; and that was just why young Sternbald never cared to marry, and, for all he knew, was still unmarried up to that hour.
This thrust took effect, because Tieck's 'Sternbald' was Edmund's favourite book, and he would have been only too glad to have been the hero of that tale himself. So he then and there put on a very pitiful face, and was very near bursting into tears.
"Well," said the goldsmith, "whatever happens, I am going to take Tussmann off your hands. What you have got to do is to get into Bosswinkel's house, by hook or by crook, as often as you can, and attract Albertine to you as much as you can manage to do. As for my operations against the Clerk of the Privy Chancery, they can't be begun till the night of the Autumnal Equinox."
Contains a detailed description of Mr. Tussmann, Clerk of the Privy Chancery; with the reason why he had to dismount the Elector's Horse; and other matters worthy to be read.
Dear reader! From what you have already learnt concerning Mr. Tussmann, you can see the man before you, in all his works and ways. But, as regards his outward man, I ought to add that he was short of stature, very bald, a little bow-legged, and very grotesque in his dress. He wore a coat of the most old-world cut, with endlessly long tails; a waistcoat, also of enormous length; and long white trousers, with shoes which, as he walked, made as loud a clatter as the boots of a courier. Here it should be observed that he never walked in the streets with regular steps, like most people, but jumped, so to speak, with great irregular strides, and incredible rapidity, so that the aforesaid long tails of his coat spread themselves out like wings, in the breeze which he thus created around him. Although there was something excessively comic about his face, yet there was a most kindly smile playing about his mouth which impressed you in his favour; and everybody liked him, though they laughed at the pedantry and awkwardness of his behaviour, which estranged him from the world. His passion was reading. He never went out but he had both his coat-pockets crammed full of books. He read wherever he was, and in all circumstances; walking or standing, as he took his exercise, in church and in the café. He read indiscriminately everything that came to his hand: but only out of old times, the present being hateful to him. Thus, to-day he would be studying, in the café, a work on algebra; to-morrow, 'Frederick the Great's Cavalry Regulations,' and next the remarkable book, 'Cicero proved to be a Pettifogger and a Windbag: in Ten Discourses. Anno 1720.' Moreover, he had a most extraordinary memory; he marked all the passages which particularly struck him in a book, then read all those marked passages over again, after which he never forgot them any more. Hence he was a polyhistor, and a walking encyclopædia, and people turned over the leaves of him when they wanted information on any point. It was only on the rarest occasions that he was unable to supply the information required on the spot, but, if he couldn't, he would go rummaging in various libraries till he could get at it, and then emerge with it, greatly delighted. It was remarkable that when (as usual) he was reading in society, to all appearance completely absorbed in his book, he heard, and took in, everything that was being said around him, and would often strike in with some most apposite observation, or laugh at anything witty in a high tenor laugh, without looking up from his book.
Commissionsrath Bosswinkel had been at school with Tussmann at the Grey Friars, and from that period dated the intimate friendship which there had always been between them. Tussmann saw Albertine grow up from childhood; and, on her twelfth birthday, after presenting her with a bouquet, the finest that money could procure from the first florist in Berlin, kissed her hand for the first time with an amount of courtesy and ceremonious deference which no one would have supposed him to be capable of. Dating from that day there dawned in the breast of the Commissionsrath an idea that it would be a very good thing if his old schoolfellow were to marry Albertine. He wanted to get Albertine married, and he thought this would be about the least troublesome way of getting it done. Tussmann would be content with very little in the shape of portion, and Bosswinkel hated bother of every kind, disliked making new acquaintances, and, in his capacity of a Commissionsrath, thought a great deal more of money than he ought to have done. On Albertine's eighteenth birthday he propounded this scheme (which he had previously kept to himself) to Tussmann.
The Clerk of the Privy Chancery was at first alarmed at the suggestion. The idea of entering the matrimonial estate, particularly with so youthful a lady, was more than he could quite see his way to. But he got accustomed to it by degrees, and one day, when Albertine, at her father's instigation, gave him a little purse, worked by her own hands in the prettiest of colours (addressing him by his much-prized "title" as she did so), his heart blazed up in a sudden flame of affection. He told the Commissionsrath at once that he had made up his mind to marry Albertine, and as Bosswinkel immediately embraced him in the character of his son-in-law, he, very naturally, considered himself engaged to her. There was still one little point in the matter of some importance, namely, that the young lady herself had not heard a syllable about the affair, and could not possibly have the very faintest inkling what was going forward.
At an excessively early hour of the morning, after the strange adventures which we have, in our first chapter, described as having been met with by Tussmann at the foot of the Townhouse Tower, and in the wineshop in Alexander Street, the said Clerk of the Privy Chancery came bursting, pale and wild, with distorted features, into his friend Bosswinkel's bedroom. The Commissionsrath was much alarmed and exercised in his mind, for Tussmann had never come in upon him at such an hour, and his manner and appearance clearly indicated that something most remarkable had been happening.
"What, in the name of Heaven, is the matter with you?" Bosswinkel cried. "Where have you been? What have you been up to? You look like I don't know what!"
Tussmann threw himself feebly into an arm-chair, and it was not till he had gasped for breath during several minutes that he was able to begin to speak--which he did in a whimpering voice.
"Bosswinkel! here, as you see me, in these self-same clothes, with 'Thomasius on Diplomatic Acumen' in my pocket, I come straight here from Spandau Street, where I have been running up and down, and backwards and forwards, ever since the clock struck twelve last night. I have not set a foot across my own doorstep, or seen the sight of a bed, nor have I closed an eye the whole livelong night!"
And he told the Commissionsrath all that had happened to him from the time when he first came across the mysterious and fabulous sort of Goldsmith, till he had made his escape from the winehouse as fast as he could, in his terror at the sorcery which was going on there.
"Tussmann, old fellow," said Bosswinkel, "I see what it is, you're not accustomed to liquoring up. You go to your bed every night at eleven o'clock, after a couple of glasses of beer, and last night you went and took more liquor than was good for you, long after you ought to have been asleep; no wonder you had a lot of funny dreams."
"What!" Tussmann cried; "you think I was asleep, do you, and dreaming? Don't you know I'm pretty well up in the subject of sleep and dreams. I'll prove to you out of Rudow's 'Theory of Sleep,' and explain to you, what sleep really is, and that people can sleep without dreaming at all; and as for what dreaming is, you will know as well as I do, if you will read the 'Somnium Scipionis,' and Artimidorus's great work on Dreams, and the Frankfort Dreambook; but, you see, you never readanythingand that's why you are always making such a hash of everything you have to do with."
"Now, my dear old man," the Commissionsrath replied, "don't you go and get yourself into a state of excitement. I can see, easily enough, how you may have allowed yourself to break out of bounds a bit last night, and then have got somehow into company with a set of mountebanks, who got the better of you when you had more liquor than you could carry; but what I cannot make out is, why, in all the earth, when you had once got out of the place, you didn't go straight home to your bed, like a reasonable man? Whatever for did you go wandering about the streets?"
"Oh, Bosswinkel!" lamented Tussman, "my old friend! my chum at the Grey Friars!--don't you go and insult me by base insinuations of that sort. Let me tell you that the infernal, diabolical enchantment which was practised upon me did not fairly commence till I gotintothe street. For, when I came to the Town-hall, every one of its windows was blazing with light, and there was music playing inside--a brass band, playing waltzes and so forth. How it came about I can't tell you; but, though I'm not a particularly tall man, I found that I was able to reach up on my tiptoes so that I could see in at the windows. Andwhatdid I see?--Oh, gracious powers of Heaven!whomdid I see?Your daughter, Miss Albertine Bosswinkel, dressed as a bride, and waltzing like the very deuce (if I may permit myself such an expression) with a young gentleman! I thumped on the window; I cried out, 'Dearest Miss Bosswinkel, what are you doing? What sort of goings-on are those, here, at this time of the night?' But just as I was saying so, there came some horrible beast of a fellow down King Street, pulled my legs away from under me as he passed, and ran away from me, with them, in peals of laughter. As for me, wretched Clerk of the Privy Chancery that I am, I plumped down flat into the filthy mud of the gutter. 'Watchman!' I shouted, 'Police! patrol; guard, turn out! Come here!--look sharp!--Stop the thief!--stop him!--he's got both my legs!' But upstairs in the Town-hall everything had suddenly grown pitch-dark, and my voice died away in the air. I was getting desperate, when the man came back, and, as he flew by me like a mad creature, chucked my legs back to me, throwing them right into my face. I then picked myself up, as speedily as, in my state of discomfiture, I could, and ran to Spandau Street. But when I got to my own door (with my latchkey in my hand), there wasI--I, myself, standing there already, staring atme, with the same big black eyes which you see in my head at this moment. Starting back in terror, I fell against a man, who seized me with a strong grip of his arms. By the halbert he was carrying, I thought he was the watchman; so I said, 'Dearest watchman!--worthy man!--please to drive away that wraith of Clerk of the Privy Chancery Tussmann from that door there, so thatI, therealTussmann, may get into my lodgings.' But the man growled out, 'Why, Tussmann! you're surely out of your senses!' in a hollow voice; and I saw it wasn't the watchman at all, but that terrible Goldsmith who had got me in his arms. Drops of cold perspiration stood on my forehead. I said: 'Most respected Herr Professor, pray do not take it ill that I should have thought you were the watchman, in the dark. Oh, Heavens! call me whatever you choose; call me in the most uncourteous manner 'Tussmann,' without the faintest adumbration of a title at all; or even 'My dear fellow!' I will overlook anything. Only rid me of this terrible enchantment--as you can, if you choose. 'Tussmann!' he said, in that awful hollow voice of his, 'nothing shall annoy you more, if you will take your solemn oath, here where we stand, to give up all idea of marrying Miss Albertine Bosswinkel.' Commissionsrath! you may fancy what I felt when this atrocious proposition was made to me. I said: 'Dearest Herr Professor! you make my very heart bleed. Waltzing is a horrible and improper thing; and Miss Albertine Bosswinkel was waltzing upstairs there--in her wedding-dress as my bride into the bargain--with some young gentleman or other (I don't know who he was), in a manner that made my sight and my hearing abandon me, out and out. But still, for all that, I cannot let that exquisite creature go. I must cleave to her, whatever happens, come what will.' The words were scarcely out of my mouth, when that awful, abominable Goldsmith gave me a sort of shove which made me begin immediately to spin round and round, and, as if impelled by some irresistible power, I went waltzing up and down Spandau Street, with my arms clasped about a broom-handle--not a lady, but a besom, which scratched my face. And all the time there were invisible hands beating my back black and blue. More than that; all round me, wherever I turned, the place was swarming with Tussmanns waltzing with their arms round besoms. At last I fell down exhausted, and lost my consciousness. When the light shone into my eyes in the morning--oh, Bosswinkel, share my terror!--I found myself sitting up on the horse of the Elector's statue, in front of him, with my head on his cold, iron breast. Luckily the sentry must have been asleep, for I managed to get down without being seen, at the risk of my life, and got away. I ran to Spandau Street; but I got so terribly frightened again that I was obliged to come on here to you."
"Now, now, old fellow!" Bosswinkel said, "do you think I'm going to believe all this rubbish? Did ever anybody hear of magical phenomena of this sort happening in our enlightened city of Berlin?"
"Now," said Tussmann, "don't you see what a quagmire of ignorance and error the fact that you neverreadanything plunges you into? If you had read Hafftitz's Chronicon, you would have seen that much more extraordinary things of the kind have happened here. Commissionsrath, I go so far as to assert, and to feel quite convinced, that this Goldsmith is the very Devil, inpropria persona."
"Pooh, pooh!" said Bosswinkel, "I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense. Think a little. Of course, what happened was that you got screwed, and then went and climbed up on to the Elector's statue."
The tears came to Tussmann's eyes as he strove to disabuse Bosswinkel's mind of this idea; but Bosswinkel grew graver and graver, and at last said:
"The more I think of it, the more I feel convinced that those people you met with were old Manasseh, the Jew, and Leonhard, the goldsmith, a very clever hand at juggling tricks, who comes every now and then to Berlin. I haven't read as many books as you have, I know; but, for all that, I know well enough that they are good honest fellows, and have no more to do with black art than you or I have. I'm astonished that you, with your knowledge of law, shouldn't be aware that superstition is illegal, and forbidden under severe penalties; no practitioner of the black art could get a licence from the Government to carry it on, under any circumstances. Look here, Tussmann. I hope there is no foundation for the idea which has come into my head. No! I can't believe that you've changed your mind about marrying my daughter; that you are screening yourself behind all sorts of incredible nonsense and stuff which nobody can believe a word of; that you are going to say to me, 'Commissionsrath: You and I are men of the world, and I can't marry your daughter, because, if I do, the Devil will bolt away with my legs and beat me black and blue!' It would be too bad, Tussmann, if you were to try on a trick of that sort upon me."
Tussmann could not find words to express his indignation at this notion on the part of his old friend. He vowed, over and over again, that he was most devotedly in love with Miss Albertine; that he would die for her without the least hesitation, like a Leander or a Troilus, and that the Devil might beat him black and blue, in his innocence, as a martyr, rather than he should give Albertine up.
As he was making these asseverations, there was heard a loud knocking at the door, and in came that old Manasseh of whom Bosswinkel had been speaking.
As soon as Tussmann saw him he cried out: "Oh, gracious powers of Heaven! That's the old Jew who made the gold pieces out of the radish, and threw them in the Goldsmith's face! The dreadful Goldsmith will be coming next, I suppose."
And he was making for the door. But Bosswinkel held him fast, saying: "Wait till we see what happens." And, turning to the old Jew, he told him what Tussmann had said about him and the events of the previous night in the wineshop and in Alexander Place.
Manasseh looked at Tussmann with a malignant grin, and said: "I don't know what the gentleman means. He came into the wineshop last night with Leonhard, the goldsmith (where I happened to be taking a glass of wine to refresh me after a quantity of hard work which had occupied me till nearly midnight). The gentleman drank rather more than was good for him: he couldn't keep on his legs, and went out to the street staggering."
"Don't you see," Bosswinkel said, "this is what comes of that terrible habit of liquoring up? You'll have to leave it off, I can assure you, if you're going to be my son-in-law."
Tussmann, overwhelmed by this unmerited reproof, sank down into a chair breathless, closed his eyes, and murmured something completely unintelligible in whimpering accents.
"Of course," said Bosswinkel, "dissipating all night, and now done up and wretched."
And, in spite of all his protestations, Tussmann had to submit to Bosswinkel's wrapping a white handkerchief about his head, and sending him home in a cab to Spandau Street.
"And what'syournews, Manasseh?" the Commissionsrath inquired. Manasseh simpered most deferentially, and with much amiability, and said Mr. Bosswinkel would scarcely be prepared for the news he had to tell him, which was that that splendid young fellow, his nephew Benjamin Dümmerl, worth close upon a million of money, had just been created a baron on account of his remarkable merits, was recently come back from Italy, and had fallen desperately in love with Miss Albertine, to whom he intended to offer his hand.
We see this young. Baron Dümmerl continually in the theatres, where he swaggers in a box of the first tier, and oftener still at concerts of every description. So that we well know him to be tall, and as thin as a broom-handle; that in his dusky yellow face, overshadowed by jetty locks and whiskers, in his whole being, he is stamped with the most distinctive and unmistakeable characteristics of the Oriental race to which he belongs; that he dresses in the most extravagant style of the very latest English fashion, speaks several languages, all in the self-same twang (that of "our people"); scrapes on a violin, hammers on the piano; is an art connoisseur without acknowledge of art, and would fain play the part of a literary Mecænas; tries to be witty without wit, andspirituelwithoutesprit; is stupidly forward, noisy, and pushing. In short, to use the concise and descriptive expression of that numerous class of individuals amongst whom his desire is to shove himself, an insufferable snob and boor. When we add to all this that he is avaricious and dirtily mean in everything that he does, it cannot be otherwise than that even those less elevated souls that fall down and worship wealth very soon leave him to himself.
When Manasseh mentioned this nephew, the thought of that approximation to a million which "Benjie" possessed passed through the Commissionsrath's mind; but along with that thought came the objection which, in his opinion, made the idea of him as a son-in-law impossible.
"My good Manasseh, you are forgetting that your nephew belongs to the old religion, and that----"
"Ho!" cried Manasseh, "what doesthatmatter? My nephew is in love with your daughter, and wants to make her happy. A drop or two of water more or less won't make much difference to him. He'll be the same man still. You just think the matter over, Herr Commissionsrath; I shall come back in a day or two with my little baron, and get your answer." With which Manasseh took his departure.
Bosswinkel began to think over the affair at once, but, spite of his boundless avarice and his utter absence of conscience or character, he could not endure the idea of Albertine's marrying that disgusting Benjamin, and in a sudden attack of rectitude he determined that he would keep his word to Tussmann.
TREATS OF PORTRAITS, A GREEN FACE, JUMPING MICE, AND ISRAELITISH CURSES.
Albertine, soon after she made Edmund's acquaintance, came to the conclusion that the big oil portrait of her father which hung in her room was a horribly bad likeness of him, and dreadfully scratched into the bargain. She pointed out to her father that though it was so many years since the portrait was painted, he was really looking much younger, and better in every way, than the painter had represented him. Also, she particularly disliked the gloomy, sulky expression of the face, the old-fashioned clothes, and a preposterous bunch of flowers which he was holding between his fingers in a delicate manner, displaying in so doing certain handsome diamond rings.
She talked so much, and so long, on this subject, that at last her father himself saw that the portrait was horrible, and couldn't understand how the painter had managed to turn out such a caricature of his well-looking person. And the more he thought the matter over and looked at the picture, the more he was convinced that it was an execrable daub. He determined to take it down, and stow it away in the lumber room.
Albertine said that was the best thing that could be done, but that, all the same, she was accustomed to see dear papa's picture in her room, that the bare space on the wall would be such a blank to her that she should never feel comfortable; so that the only course was for dear papa to haveanotherportrait painted, by some painter who knew what he was about, and thatshecould think of nobody but Edmund Lehsen, so celebrated for his admirable portraits.
"My dear," the Commissionsrath said, "you don't know what you're talking about. Those young painters are so full of conceit, they don't know where to turn themselves, don't care how much they ask for those bits of scumblings of theirs, won't think of anything under gold Fredericks."
But Albertine declared that Edmund Lehsen painted for the love of the thing much more than for money, and would be sure to charge very little. And she kept on at her father so assiduously, that at last he agreed to go to Edmund Lehsen, and see what he would say about a portrait.
We can imagine the delight with which Edmund expressed his readiness to undertake the Commissionsrath's portrait; and his delight became rapture when he heard that it was Albertine who put the idea in her father's head. He saw, of course, that her notion was that this would give him opportunities of seeing her. So that it was a matter of course that when the Commissionsrath asked, rather anxiously, about the price, Edmund said that the honour of being admitted, for the sake of Art, to the house and society of a gentleman such as he, was more than sufficient remuneration for any little effort of his.
"Good Heavens! Can I believe my ears?" the Commissionsrath cried. "No money, dearest Mr. Lehsen? No gold Fredericks for your trouble? Not even the expense of your paints and canvas?"
Edmund laughingly said all that was too insignificant to be taken into account.
"But," Bosswinkel said, "I'm afraid you don't know that I'm thinking of having a three-quarters length life-size."
"It doesn't matter in the slightest," the painter answered.
The Commissionsrath pressed him warmly to his heart, and cried, while tears of joy rose to his eyes, "Oh, heavenly powers! Are there human souls of this degree of disinterestedness in this world which lieth in wickedness? First his cigars, and now this picture. Marvellous man!--or 'youth' I ought to say. Dear Mr. Lehsen, within your soul dwell those virtues, and that true German singleness of heart, which one reads of more than enough, but which are rare in these times of ours. But let me tell you, though I am a Commissionsrath, and dress in French fashions, I am quite of the same way of thinking as yourself. I can appreciate your large-mindedness, and am as unselfish, and as free with my money, as anybody in the land."
Crafty Miss Albertine had, of course, known exactly how Edmund would proceed with her father's commission, and her object was attained. Bosswinkel overflowed with laudation of this grand young fellow, so entirely free from the least trace of that greediness which is such a hateful quality in a man. And he ended by saying that young people, especially the artistic, always have a turn for the romantic, and set great store by withered flowers and the ribbons which some beloved girl has worn, and go out of themselves altogether over any piece of work done by the hands of those divinities; so that Albertine had better knit a little purse for Edmund, and, if she saw no particular objection, even put into it a little lock of her bonny nut-brown hair, and thus get out of any little obligation they might be thought to be under to him. To do this she had his full permission, and he undertook to answer to Tussmann on the subject. Albertine, who was not yet taken into her father's confidence as to his projects, had not the remotest notion what Tussmann might have to say to the matter, and did not take the trouble to inquire.
That very evening Edmund had his painting gear taken to Bosswinkel's house, and the next morning he made his appearance there for the first sitting.
He begged the Commissionsrath to think of the very happiest moment of his life. For instance, when his dead wife first said she loved him, or when Albertine was born, or when he unexpectedly saw some dear friend whom he had thought to be lost to him; and to try and look as he had donethen.
"Wait a moment, Mr. Lehsen," said Bosswinkel; "I know what to do. One day, about three months ago, I got a letter from Hamburg telling me I had drawn a big prize in the lottery. I ran to my daughter with the letter open in my hand. That was the happiest moment I ever had in all my life. Let's choosethatone; and, just to place the whole thing more vividly before your eyes--and mine--I'll go and get the letter, and be taken with it in my hand--just as I was when it came."
So Edmund had no help but to paint Bosswinkel accordingly; and he wouldn't be content, either, unless the writing on the letter was rendered legibly and distinctly, word for word, as follows:--
"Honoured Sir,
"I have the honour to inform you----"
and so forth; moreover, the envelope had to be portrayed lying on a little table, so that the address on it, displaying all the Commissionsrath's official titles written out at full length, could be clearly read. The very postmark Edmund had to copy with the utmost minuteness.
For the rest, he made a portrait of a well-looking, good-tempered, handsomely-dressed man, whodiddisplay, in some of the features of his face, a more or less distant resemblance to the Commissionsrath; so that nobody who read what was on the envelope could make any mistake as to whom the portrait was intended for.
The Commissionsrath was delighted with it. "There," he said; "there you see what a painter who knows his business can make of a more or less well-looking fellow, though hemaybe getting a little on in years! I begin to understand now (I didn't before), a thing that the Professor in the Humanity Class used to say, that a proper portrait ought to be a regular historical picture. Whenever I look at that one, I remember that delicious and happy moment when the news came of my prize in the lottery, and I understand the meaning of that smile on my face--that reflection of the happiness I felt within me then."
Before Albertine could carry out the plans which she had formed in her mind, her father took the initiative by begging Edmund to painther, as well. Edmund begun this work at once; but he did not find it so easy to satisfy himself with her portrait as with her father's. He put in a most careful outline, and then rubbed it out again; outlined once more--carefully--begun to lay on some colour, and then threw the whole thing aside; commenced again; altered the pose. There was always either too much light in the room, or not enough. The Commissionsrath, who had always been present at those sittings at first, got tired presently, and betook himself elsewhere.
Upon this, Edmund came forenoon and afternoon, and if the picture did not make much progress, the love-affair made a great deal, and entwined itself more and more firmly. I have no doubt, dear reader, that your own experience has shown you that when one is in love, and wants to give to all the fond, longing words and wishes, which one has got to express, their due and proper effect, so that they may go to the listener's very heart, it is a matter of absolute necessity that one should take hold of the hand of the beloved object, press it, and kiss it; upon which, as by the operation of some sudden development of electrical force, lip goes into contact with lip; and the electricity (if that is what we are to call it), arrives at a condition of equilibrium by means of a fire-stream of sweetest kisses. Thus Edmund was very often obliged to stop painting, and not only that, but he had very frequently to get down from the scaffold upon which he and his easel were placed.
Thus it came about that, one forenoon, he was standing with Albertine at the window, where the white curtains were drawn, and (on the principle we have been explaining), in order to give more force to what he was saying to her, was holding her in his arms, and kissing her hand.
At this particular hour and moment, Mr. Tussmann, Clerk of the Privy Chancery, happened to be passing Bosswinkel's house, with the 'Treatise on Diplomatic Acumen,' and sundry tractates and pamphlets (in which the useful and the entertaining were combined in due measure) in his pockets. And although he was bounding along as fast as ever he could--according to his manner--because the clock was just on the very stroke of the hour at which he used always to enter his office, still he drew up for a moment, in order to cast a sentimental glance up at the window of his love.
There he saw, as in a cloud, Albertine with Edmund; and, although he could not make out anything at all distinctly, his heart throbbed, he knew not why. Some strange sense of anxious alarm impelled him to undertake things previously unattempted, undreamt of, namely, to go upstairs to Albertine's rooms, at this totally unprecedented hour of the day.
As he entered, Albertine was saying, quite distinctly:
"Oh, yes, Edmund! I must always--always love you!" And she pressed Edmund to her heart, whilst a whole battery of "restoration of electrical equilibrium" began to go off, rushing and sparkling.
The Clerk of the Privy Chancery walked mechanically forward into the room, and then stood, dumb and speechless, like a man in a cataleptic fit. In the height of their blissfulness the two lovers had not heard the elephantine tread of Tussmann's peculiar boot-like shoes, nor his opening of the door, nor his coming in, and striding into the middle of the room.
He now squeaked out, in his high falsetto:
"But--Miss Albertine Bosswinkel!----"
Edmund and Albertine fled apart like lightning--he to his easel, she to the chair where she was supposed to be sitting for her portrait. Tussmann, after a short pause, during which he tried to get back his breath, resumed, saying--
"But, Miss Albertine Bosswinkel, what are you doing? What are you after? First of all, you go and waltz with this young gentleman (I haven't the honour of his acquaintance), in the Town-hall at twelve o'clock at night, in a way that made me, your husband that is to be, almost lose the faculties of seeing and hearing; and now--here--in broad daylight, behind those curtains--Oh! Good gracious!--is this a way for an engaged young lady to go on?"
"Who's an engaged young lady?" Albertine cried out, in immense indignation. "Whom are you talking about, Mr. Tussmann? Tell me, if you will be so kind."
"Oh, thou, my Creator," cried Tussmann, in the fulness of his heart. "You ask, dearest Miss Albertine, who is an engaged young lady, and of whom I am talking? To whom else can I be alluding but to yourself? Are you not my future bride, whom I have so long adored in secret? Did not your dear papa ever so long ago promise me your beautiful, white,sokissable little hand?"
"Mr. Tussmann," said Albertine; "either you have been to a wineshop, early as it is in the day--(my father says you go to them a great deal more than you ought),--or you've gone out of your mind in some extraordinary way. My father can never have had the slightest idea ofyourmarryingme."
"Dearest Miss Albertine," cried Tussmann; "consider for a moment. You have known me for many long years. Have I not always been a man of the strictest moderation and temperance? Have I ever been given to dissipation? Can you suppose that I have taken to drinking and improper conduct all at once? Dearest Miss Albertine, I shall be only too happy to close my eyes to what I have seen going on here; not a syllable concerning it shall ever pass my lips--we'll forget and forgive. But remember, adored one, that you promised to marry me out of the tower window of the Town-hall at twelve o'clock at night; and, although you were waltzing in such a style with this young gentleman (whose acquaintance, as I said, I have not the honour of), still I----"
"Don't you see?" interrupted Albertine; "don't you know, that you're talking all sorts of incoherent nonsense, like some lunatic out of the asylum? Please go away. I feel quite unwell; do go away, for goodness' sake."
Tears started in Tussmann's eyes.
"Oh, heavens!" he cried. "Treatment like this from the beloved Miss Albertine! No; I shall not go. I shall remain here till you have arrived at a truer opinion concerning my unworthy person, dearest Miss Albertine."
"Go; go!" reiterated Albertine, running into a corner of the room, and covering her face with her handkerchief.
"No, dearest Miss Albertine," answered Tussmann; "I shall not go until, in compliance with the sapient advice of Thomasius, I endeavour to----" and he made as if he would follow her into the corner.
While this was going on, Edmund had been scumbling angrily at the background of his picture. But at this point he could contain himself no longer.
"Damned, infernal scoundrel!" he cried, and flew at Tussmann, making four dashes over his face with the brush, full of a greyish green tint, which he had been working at his background with. Then he grasped him, opened the door, and sent him out of it with a kick so forcible that he went flying down stairs like an arrow out of a bow.
Bosswinkel, who was just coming up, started back in much alarm as this school-chum of his came bumping into his arms.
"What in the name of all that's----" he cried; "what's going on? what ails your face?" Tussmann, almost out of his mind, related all that had happened, in broken phrases; how Albertine had behaved to him--how Edmund had treated him. The Commissionsrath, brimful of rage and fury, took Tussmann by the hand and led him back to the room.
"What's all this?" he cried to Albertine. "This is very pretty behaviour; is this the way you treat your husband that is to be?"
"My husband that is to be?" echoed Albertine, in wild amazement.
"Most undoubtedly!" the Commissionsrath answered. "I don't know why you should pretend to be in a state of mind about a matter which has been understood and arranged for such a long time. My dear old friend Tussmann is your affianced husband, and the wedding will come off in a week or two."
"Never!" said Albertine. "Never will I marry him. Good heavens! how could anybody havethatold creature; nobody could ever bear him."
"I don't know about 'bearing' him, or whether he's an 'old creature' or not," said her father. "What you have got to do is to marry him. Certainly my friend Tussmann is not one of your giddy young fools. Like myself, he has reached those years of discretion when a man is, very properly, considered to be at his best; and into the bargain, he is a fine, upright, straightforward, honourable fellow, most profoundly learned, perfectly eligible, in every way, and my old schoolfellow."
"No!" cried Albertine, in the utmost agitation, with the tears starting to her eyes. "I can't endure him. He's insupportable to me. I hate him! I abhor him! Oh, Edmund!"
She sank, almost fainting, into Edmund's arms; and he pressed her to his heart with the warmest affection.
The Commissionsrath, utterly amazed, opened his eyes as wide as if he were seeing spectres, and then cried--"What's all this? what do I see?"
"Ah, yes! yes, indeed!" Tussmann said, in a lamentable tone. "It appears, unfortunately, to be the fact that Miss Albertine doesn't care to have anything to do with me, and seems to cherish a remarkable partiality for this young gentleman--this painter (whose acquaintance I have not the honour of, by the way)--inasmuch as she kisses him without the slightest hesitation or shyness, though she will scarcely give wretchedmeher hand. And yet I hope to place the ring on her lovely finger very shortly indeed."
"Come away from one another, you two," the Commissionsrath cried out, and forced Albertine out of Edmund's arms. But Edmund shouted that he would never give her up, if it cost him his life.
"Indeed, sir!" said the Commissionsrath, with scathing irony. "Nice business, upon my word! A fine little love-affair going on behind my back here! Excessively pretty! Very nice indeed, my young Mr. Lehsen! This is the meaning of your liberality--your cigars and your pictures. He comes sliding into my house--leads my daughter into all this sort of thing. A charming idea, that I should go and hang her round the neck of a miserable beggar of a dauber, without a rap to bless himself with!"
Beyond himself with anger, Edmund had his mahlstick raised in the act to strike, when the voice of Leonhard was heard crying, in tones of thunder, as he burst in at the door--
"Stop, Edmund! don't be in a hurry. Bosswinkel is a terrible ass; he'll think better of it presently."
The Commissionsrath had run into a corner, frightened by the unexpected arrival of Leonhard; and, from that corner, he cried--"I really do not know, Mr. Leonhard, what business you have to----"
But Tussmann had hidden himself behind the sofa as soon as he saw Leonhard come in. He was crouching down there, and chirping out, in a voice of terror--"Gracious powers! take care, Commissionsrath! Hold your tongue; don't say a word, dearest schoolfellow. Good God! here's the Herr Professor come, the Ball-Entrepreneur of Spandau Street."
"Come along out, Tussmann," said the Goldsmith, laughing; "Don't be frightened, nothing's going to happen to you. You've been punished enough already for that foolish idea you had of wanting to marry. That poor face of yours is going to be green all the rest of the days of your life."
"Oh Lord!" cried the Clerk of the Privy Chancery, almost out of his mind, "my face green for ever and ever! What will people say? What will His Excellency, the minister, say? His Excellency will think I have had my face painted green from motives of mere worldly vanity! Ah! it's all over with me. I shall be suspended from my official functions. The Government will never hear of such a thing as a Clerk of the Privy Chancery with a green face. Wretched man that I am; what's to become of me?"
"Come, come, Tussmann!" the Goldsmith said; "don't make such a fuss. I have no doubt there's hope for you yet, if you pull yourself together, and get rid of this idiotic notion of marrying Miss Bosswinkel."
In answer to this, Tussmann and Bosswinkel cried out together, in what is termed on the lyric stage "ensemble"--
"I can't."
"He shan't."
The Goldsmith fixed his sparkling, penetrating eyes on the two of them; but just as he was going to burst out at them, the door opened, and in came Manasseh, with his nephew, Baron Benjamin Dümmerl, from Vienna. "Benjie" went straight up to Albertine--who had never seen him in her life before--and said, in a disagreeable, drawling tone, as he took her hand--
"I have come here in person, dear Miss Bosswinkel, to lay myself at your feet. Of course you know that is a merefaçon de parler. Baron Dümmerl doesn't really lay himself at anybody's feet, not even at the Emperor's. What I mean is--let me have a kiss."
So saying, he went nearer to Albertine, and bent down towards her.
But, at that moment, a something happened which neither he nor anybody else--except the Goldsmith--anticipated, and which caused them all much alarm. Benjie's rather sizeable nose suddenly shot forward to such a length that, passing beyond Albertine's face, it struck the opposite wall of the room with a tremendous, resounding bang. He started back a step or two, and his nose at once drew in to its ordinary dimensions. He approached Albertine again, with exactly the same result. To make a long tale short, his nose kept on shooting in and out like a trombone.
"Cursed necromancer!" Manasseh roared; and took a thin cord, fastened in a sort of knot, out of his pocket, which he threw to the Commissionsrath, crying--"Throw that about the brute's neck--the Goldsmith, I mean--and then drag him out of the room. Never mind about ceremony. Do as I tell you. All will be right then."
The Commissionsrath took hold of the noose, but instead of throwing it about the Goldsmith's neck, he threw it over the Jew's; and immediately he and the Jew began flying up to the ceiling and then down again. And so they went on, shooting up and down, while Benjie carried on his nose-concerto, and Tussmann laughed like a mad creature, till the Commissionsrath fell down nearly fainting in an arm-chair.
"Now's the time! now's the time!" Manasseh cried. He slapped his pocket, and out sprung an enormous, horrible-looking mouse, which made a spring right at the Goldsmith. But as it was jumping at him, the Goldsmith transfixed it with a sharp needle of gold, upon which it gave a yell, and disappeared, none knew whither.
Then Manasseh clenched his fists at the fainting Commissionsrath, and cried, with rage and hatred blazing in his face--
"Ha! Melchior Bosswinkel! thou hast conspired against me. Thou art in league with this accursed sorcerer, whom thou hast brought into thine house. But cursed, cursed shalt thou be. Thou and all thy race shall be swept away like the helpless brood of a bird. The grass shall grow on thy doorstep, and all that thou settest thy hand to shall be as the dream of the famishing, who sates himself, in dreams, with savoury food. And the Dā-lěs shall take up his dwelling in thine house, and consume thy substance. And thou shalt beg thy bread, in rags, before the doors of the despised people of God; and they shall drive thee away like a mangy cur, and thou shalt be cast to the earth like a rotten branch. And instead of the sound of the harp, moths shall be thy fellows, and dogs shall make a divan of the tomb of thy mother! Curses!--curses!--curses upon thee! Commissionsrath Melchior Bosswinkel!"
And, having thus delivered himself, this raging Manasseh seized hold of his nephew, and went storming out of the house with him.
Albertine, in her terror and horror, had taken refuge with Edmund, hiding her face on his breast; and he held her closely to him, though he had difficulty in mastering his own emotion. But the Goldsmith went up to those two, and said, with a smile, and in a gentle voice:
"Don't you be put out in the slightest by all this business: everything will come right. I give you my word for it. But, just now, you must bid each other good-bye, before Tussmann and Bosswinkel come back to their senses."
And he and Edmund left Bosswinkel's house.