Chapter V (2)

This holiday pause of darkness afforded a capital opportunity for jumping up, flying into a passion, and pointing out to Lenette more in detail how it was that she plagued and tormented him, however admirably he might have arranged things; and, like all women, had neither rhyme nor reason in her ways of doing things, always snuffing either too close or not close enough. She, however, lighted the candle without saying a word, and he got into a greater rage than before, and demanded to be informed whether he had ever as yet asked anything of her but the merest trifles possible to conceive, and if anybody but his own wedded wife would have hesitated for a moment to attend to them. "Just answer me," he said.

She did not answer him; she set the freshly-lighted candle on the table, and tears were in her eyes. It was the first time he had caused her a tear, since her marriage. In a moment, like a person magnetised, he saw and diagnosed all that was diseased and unhealthy in his system; and, on the spot, he cast out the old Adam, and shied him contemptuously away into a corner. This was an easy task for _him_; his heart was always so open to love and justice, that the moment these goddesses came into view, the tone of anger with which he had commenced a sentence would fall into gentle melody before he reached the end of it; he could stop his battle-axe in the middle of its stroke.

So that a household peace was here concluded, the instruments thereof being one pair of moist eyes and one pair of bright kind ones; and a Westphalia treaty of peace accorded one candle to each party, with absolute freedom of snuffing.

But the peace was soon embittered, inasmuch as Penia, goddess of poverty (who has thousands of invisible churches all about the country, where most houses are her tabernacles and lazar cells), began to make manifest her bodily presence and her all-controlling power. There was no more money in the house. But, rather than place his honour and his freedom in pledge, and incur obligations which he had less and less prospect of repaying--I mean, rather than borrow--he would have sold all he had, and himself into the bargain, like the old German. It is said, the national debt of England, if counted out in dollars, would make a ring round the earth, like a second equator; however, I have not as yet measured this nose-ring of the British Lion, this annular eclipse, or halo, round the sun of Britain, myself. But I know that Siebenkæs would have considered a negative money-girdle of this sort about his waist to be a penance-belt stuck full of spines, or an iron ring, such as people who tow boats have on; a girdle compressing the heart in a fatal manner. Even supposing he were to borrow, and then stop payment, as nations and banking-houses do--a catastrophe which debtors and aristocratic persons, who have their wits about them, manage to avoid without difficulty, by the simple expedient of never _beginning_ payment--yet, having only one friend whom he could convert into a creditor (Stiefel), he couldn't possibly have seen this dear friend, who was in the first rank of his spiritual creditors already, figuring in the fifth rank, or that of the unpaid. He therefore avoided such a two-fold transgression as this would have been--a sin against both friendship and honour--by pledging things of less value, namely, household furniture.

He went back (but alone) to the pewter cupboard in the kitchen, and peeped through the rail to see whether there were two ranks of dishes or three. Alas! there wag but one rear-rank man of a plate standing behind his front-rank man, like double notes of interrogation. He marched the rear-rank man to the front accordingly, and gave him for travelling companions and fellow-refugees a herring-dish, a sauce-boat, and a salad-bowl. Having effected this reduction of his army, he extended the remaining troops so as to occupy a wider front, and subdivided the three large gaps into twenty small ones. He then moved these disbanded soldiers to the sitting-room, and went and called Lenette, who was in the bookbinder's room.

"I've been looking at our pewter cupboard for the last five or ten minutes," he said. "I really shouldn't have noticed, if I hadn't known it, that I had taken away the tureen and the plates. Should you?"

"Ah, indeed, I do notice it every day of my life," she declared.

Here, however, being rather uneasy at the idea of what might be the result of _too_ long an inspection, he hurried her into the sitting-room, where the dishes were which he had just taken out, and made known his intention of transposing, like a clever musician, this quartett from the key of pewter into that of silver. He proposed the selling of them, that she might be got to agree the more easily to their being pawned. But she pulled out every stop of the feminine organ, the clarion, the stopped diapason, flute, bird-stop, _vox humana_, and, lastly, the tremolo stop. He might say whatever he liked; _she_ said whatever _she_ liked. A man does not try to arrest the iron arm of necessity, or to avert it; he calmly awaits its stroke; a woman tries to struggle away from its grip, at any rate for a few hours, before it encircles her. It was in vain that Siebenkæs quietly and simply asked her if she knew what else was to be done. To questions of this sort, there float up and down in women's heads not one complete answer, but thousands of half answers, which are supposed to amount to a whole one, just as in the differential calculus an infinite number of straight lines go to form a curved one. Some of these unripe, half-formed, fugitive, mutually auxiliary answers were----

"He shouldn't have changed his name, and he would have had his mother's money by this time."

"Of course, he might borrow."

"Look at all his clients, well off and comfortable, and he won't ask them to pay him."

"He never dreams of asking a fee for defending the infanticide."

"And he shouldn't spend so much money." "He needn't have paid that half-term's rent in advance." For the latter would have kept him going for a day or two, you see!

It is always a vain task to oppose the "minority of one" of the complete and true answer to the immense majority of feminine partial proofs of this sort; women know, at any rate, thus much of the law of Switzerland, that four half or invalid witnesses outweigh one whole or valid one.[41] But the best way of confuting them is, to let them say what they have got to say, and not utter a word yourself; they're certain to diverge, before very long, into subsidiary or accessory matters, which you yield to them, confuting them, as regards the real subject of argument, simply by action. This is the only species of confutation which they ever forgive. Siebenkæs, unfortunately, attempted to apply the surgical bandage of philosophy to Lenette's two principal members, her head and her heart, and therefore commenced as follows--

"Dear wife, in the parish church you sing against worldly riches, like the rest of the congregation, and yet you have them fixed on your heart as firmly as your brooch. Now, I don't go to a church, it's true, but I have a pulpit in my own breast, and I prize one single happy moment more than the whole of this pewter dirt. Tell me truly now, has your immortal heart been pained by the tragical fate of the soup-tureen, or was it only your pericardium? The doctors prescribe tin, in powder, for worms; and may not this miserable tin, which we have broken into little pieces and swallowed, have had a similar effect on the abominable worms of the heart? Collect yourself, and think of our cobbler here, does his soup taste any the worse to him out of his painted iron _saucière_ because his bit of roast meat is eaten out of it too? You sit behind that pincushion of yours, and can't see that society is mad, and drinks coffee, tea, and chocolate out of different cups, and has particular kinds of plates for fruit, for salad, and for herrings, and particular sorts of dishes for hares, fish, and poultry. And I say that it will get madder and madder as time goes on, and order as many kinds of fruit plates from the china shops as there are different fruits in the gardens--at least, I should do it myself; and if I were a crown prince, or a grand master, I should insist upon having lark dishes and lark knives, snipe dishes and snipe knives; neither would I carve the haunch of a stag of sixteen upon any plate I had once had a stag of eight upon. The world is a fine madhouse, and one gets up and preaches his false doctrine in it when another has done, just as they do in a Quaker meeting. So the Bedlamites think that only two follies are veritable follies, follies which are past, and follies which are yet to come--old follies and new; but I would show them that theirs partake of the nature of both."

Lenette's only reply was an inexpressibly _gentle_ request: "Oh! please, Firmian, do _not_ sell the pewter."

"Very well, then, I shan't!" (he answered, with a bitter satirical joy at having got the brilliant neck of the pigeon fairly into the noose which he had so long had ready baited for it). "The emperor Antoninus sent his real silver plate to the mint, so that I might surely send mine; but just as you like: I don't care twopence. Not an ounce of it shall be old; I shall merely pawn! I'm much obliged to you for the suggestion; and if I only hit the eagle's tail on St. Andrew's Day, or the imperial globe, I can redeem the whole of it in a minute--I mean with the money of the prize; at all events, the salad-bowl and the soup-tureen. I think you're quite right. Old Sabel's in the house, is she not? She can take the things and bring back the money."

She let it be so now. The shooting-match on St. Andrew's Day was her Fortunatus's wishing-cap, the wooden wings of the eagle were as waxen flying-apparatus fixed on to her hopes, the powder and shot were the flower-seeds of her future blossoms of peace (as they are to crowned heads also). Thou poor soul, in many senses of the word! But the poor hope incredibly more than the rich; therefore it is that poor devils are more apt to catch the infection of lotteries than the rich--just as they are to catch the plague and other epidemics.

Siebenkæs--who looked down with contempt not only on the loss of his household goods, but on the loss of his money--was secretly resolved to leave the trash at the pawnbroker's, unredeemed for ever, like a state-bond, even though he should chance to be king (at the shooting-match), and convert the transaction into a regular sale some future day, when he happened to be passing the shop.

After a few bright quiet days Peltzstiefel came again to make an evening call. Amid the manifold embargoes laid upon their supplies, the risks attending their smuggling operations, and as a tear or a sigh was laid as a tax which _must_ necessarily be paid upon every loaf of bread, Firmian had had no time, to say nothing of inclination, to remember his jealousy. In Lenette's case, matters were necessarily exactly reversed; and if she really has any love for Stiefel, it must grow faster on his money-dunghill than on the advocate's field all over wells of hunger. The Schulrath's eye was not one of those which read the troubles of a household in a minute, though they are masked by smiling faces; he noticed nothing of the kind. And for that very reason it came to pass that this friendly trio spent a happy hour free from clouds, during which, though the sun of happiness did not shine, yet the moon of happiness (hope and memory) rose shimmering in their sky. Moreover, Siebenkæs had the enjoyment of being provided with a cultivated listener, who could follow and appreciate the jingle of the bells on the jester's cap, the trumpet fanfares of his Leibgeberish sallies. Lenette could neither follow nor appreciate them in the very least, and even Peltzstiefel didn't understand him when he _read_ him, but only when he _heard him talk_. The two men at first talked only of persons, not of things, as women do; only that they called their chronique scandaleuse by the name of History of Literature and Men of Letters. For literary men like to know every little trait and peculiarity of a great author--what clothes he wears, and what his favourite dishes are. For similar reasons, women minutely observe every little trait and peculiarity of any crown princess who happens to pass through the town, even to her ribbons and fringes. From literary men they passed to scholarship; and then all the clouds of this life melted away, and in the land of learning, the fair realm of science, the downcast sorrowful head, wrapped and veiled in the black Lenten altar-cloth of hardship and privation, is lifted up once more. The soul inhales the mountain air of its native land, and looks down from the lofty peak of Pindus upon its poor bruised and wounded body lying beneath--that body which it has to drag and bear about, sighing under its weight. When some dunned, needy scholar, some skin-and-bone reading-master, a poor curate with five children, or a baited and badgered tutor, is lying woeful and wretched--every nerve quivering under some instrument of torture--and a brother of his craft, plagued by just as many instruments of torture as himself, comes and argues and philosophises with him a whole evening, and tells him all the latest opinions of the literary papers, then truly the sand-glass which marks the hours of the torture[42] is laid on its side--Orpheus comes, all bright and shining, with the lyre of knowledge in his hand, into the psychic hell of the two brethren in office, the sad tears vanish from their brightening eyes, the snakes of the furies twine into graceful curls, the Ixion's wheel rolls harmoniously to the lyre, and these two poor Sisyphuses sit resting quietly on their stones and listen to the music. But the poor curate's, the reading-master's, the scholar's, good wife, what is her comfort in her misery? She has none except her husband, who ought, therefore, to be very tender to all her shortcomings.

The reader was made aware in the first book that Leibgeber had sent three programmes from Bayreuth. Stiefel brought the one, by Dr. Frank, with him, and asked Siebenkæs to write a notice of it for the 'Kuhschnappel Heavenly Messenger.' He also took out of his pocket another little book, to receive its sentence. The reader will hail both these works with gladness, seeing that my hero and his has no money in the house, and will be able to live for a day or two by reviewing them. The second manuscript, which was in a roll, was entitled: 'Lessingii, Emilia Galotti. Pro gymnasmatis loco latine reddita et publice acta, moderante J. H. Steffens. Cellis 1788.'

It seems that a good many of the subscribers to the 'Heavenly Messenger' have complained of the length of time which elapsed before this work was noticed, drawing disadvantageous comparisons between the 'Messenger' and the 'Universal German Library;' for the latter, notwithstanding the greatness of its universal German circulation, notices good works within a few years of their birth--sometimes even as early as the third year of their existence--so that the favourable notice can frequently be bound up with the work, the first paper-covers of it not being worn out before. The reason, however, why the 'Heavenly Messenger' did not, and in fact could not, review more of the books of the year 1788, was, that it was not until five years after that date that it--first saw the light itself.

"Don't you think," said Siebenkæs, in a friendly manner to Peltzstiefel, "that if I'm going to write proper notices of Messrs. Frank and Steffens here, my wife should take care not to make a thundering noise, swishing away with her broom at my back?"

"That might really be a matter of very considerable importance," said Stiefel, gravely. Upon which a playful and somewhat abridged report of the proceedings in the household action of inhibition was laid before him. Wendeline fixed her kindly eyes on Peltzstiefel's face, striving to read the _Rubrum_ (the red title), and the _Nigrum_ (the black body matter) of his judgment there before it was pronounced. Both colours were there. But though Stiefel's bosom heaved with genuine sighs of the deepest affection for her, he nevertheless addressed her as follows--

"Madame Siebenkæs, this really won't do at all; for God hath not created anything nobler than a scholar sitting at his writing. Hundreds of thousands of people, ten times told, are sitting in every quarter of the globe, as if on school-forms before him, and to all of these he has to speak. Errors held by the wisest and cleverest people he has to eradicate: ages, long since gone to dust and passed away, with those who lived in them, he has to describe with accuracy and minuteness; systems, the most profound and the most complex, he has to confute and overthrow, or otherwise to invent and establish, himself. His light has to pierce through massy crowns, through the Pope's triple tiara, through Capuchin hoods and through wreaths of laurel--to pierce them all and enlighten the brains within. This is his work; and this work he can perform. But Madame Siebenkæs, what a strain on his faculties! What a grand sustained effort is necessary! It is a hard matter and a difficult to set up a book in type, but harder still to write it! Think what the strain must have been when Pindar wrote, and Homer, earlier still--I mean in the 'Iliad'--and so with one after another, down to our own day. Is it any wonder, then, that great writers, in the terrible strain and absorption of all their ideas, have often scarcely known where they were, what they were doing, or what they would be at; that they were blind and dumb, and insensible to everything but what was perceived by the _five interior spiritual senses_, like blind people, who see beautifully in their dreams, but in their waking state are, as we have said, blind! This state of absorbedness and strain it is which I consider to explain how it was that Socrates and Archimedes could stand and be completely unconscious of the storm and turmoil going on around them; how Cardanus in the profundity of his meditation was unconscious of his Chiragra; others of the gout; one Frenchman of a great conflagration, and a second Frenchman of the death of his wife."

"There, you see," said Lenette, much delighted, in a low voice to her husband, "how can a learned gentleman possibly hear his wife when she's at her washing and scrubbing?"

Stiefel, unmoved, went on with the thread of his argument: "Now, a fire of this description can only be kindled in absolute and uninterrupted calm. And this is the reason why all the great artists and men of letters in Paris live nowhere but in the Rue Ste. Victoire; the other streets are all too noisy. And it is hence that no smiths, tinkers, or tinmen, are allowed to work in the street where a professor lives."

"No TINMEN especially," added Siebenkæs, very gravely. "It should always be remembered that the mind cannot entertain more than half-a-dozen of ideas at a time; so that if the idea of noise should make its appearance as a wicked seventh, of course some one or other of the previous ideas, which might otherwise have been followed up or written down, takes its departure from the head altogether."

Indeed Stiefel made Lenette give him her hand as a pledge that she would always stand still, like Joshua's sun, while Firmian was smiting the foe with pen and scourge.

"Haven't I often asked the bookbinder myself," she said, "not to hammer so hard upon his books, because my husband would hear him when he was making _his_." However, she gave the Schulrath her hand, and he went away contented with their contentment, leaving them quite hopeful of quieter times.

But, ye dear souls, of how little use to you is this state of peace, seeing ye are on half-pay and starving in this cold, empty, orphan hospital of an earth--how little will it help you in these dim labyrinthian wanderings of your destiny, of which even the Ariadne clue-threads all turn to nets and snares? How long will the poor's advocate manage to live on the produce of the pawned pewter, and on the price of the two reviews which he is going to write? Only, we are all like the Adam of the epic, and take our first night to be the day of judgment, and the setting of the sun for the end of the world. We sorrow for our friends, just as if there were no brighter future YONDER, and we sorrow for ourselves as if there were no brighter future HERE. For all our passions are born Atheists and unbelievers.