Chapter XII (2)

The crying need of our two friends was now to be alone with one another. Leibgeber, under the new excitement, could scarce wait to attain the birch wood, where he meant to continue their previous conversation regarding Siebenkæs' domestic and conjugal affairs. With respect to Nathalie, he briefly pointed out to his astonished friend that what so much delighted him in her was just the unhesitating, downright straightforwardness which marked all her thoughts and actions, and her manly cheerfulness, athwart which the world, and poverty, and chances and accidents of every kind merely passed floating away, like light, shining summer clouds, never darkening her day. "Now as regards you and your Lenette," he went on (when they reached the solitude of the little wood), as quietly as if he had been talking continuously up to that instant, "if I were in your place, I should take an alterative, and get rid of the hard gall-stone of matrimony for good and all. You will never really be able to bear the pain of the bonds of wedlock, though you scrape and scratch away at them for years to come with all your finest hair-saws and bone-saws. The Divorce Court will give _one_ grand cut and tear--and there you are, free of one another for ever and ever."

The idea of a divorce terrified Siebenkæs, although he saw very clearly that it was the only possible breaking-point for the storm-clouds of his life. He was far from grudging to Lenette either her freedom, or the marriage with Stiefel, which would infallibly result; but he felt quite sure that, however much she might wish for it, she never would consent to an enforced separation, on account of her strong regard for appearances,--also that on their road to this parting both she and he would have to pass many a bitter hour of heart-strain and nerve-fever,--and that they could hardly afford to pay for a betrothal, much less for a divorce.

It was likewise an accessory circumstance, that it was more than he could bear to think of the sight of the poor innocent soul, who had shivered at his side through so many a cold storm of life, going away for ever from his home, and from his arms--ay, and with _that handkerchief_ in her hand, too!

All these considerations, with many stronger, and many weaker, he laid before his friend, finishing up with this final one: "I assure you, moreover, that if she went away from me, tag and baggage, and left me by myself in that empty room (as in a grave), and in all the blank, cleared-out spaces, where, when all's said and done, we have sat together through so many kindly happy hours, and seen the flowers growing green about us--she never could pass by my window (while she bore my name, at all events, though no longer mine), but something within me would bid me throw myself down, and dash myself in pieces at her feet. Would it not be ten times better," he continued in an altered tone, "to wait till I fall down upstairs in the room (or what does my giddiness mean), and be taken out of the window, and out of the world, in a better fashion? Friend Death would take his long erasing knife, and scrape my name (and other blots into the bargain) out of her marriage-lines."

Contrary to all expectation, this seemed to make Leibgeber merrier and livelier than ever. "Do so!" he said; "it's the very thing! Die by all means! The funeral expenses can't possibly come to anything approaching the costs of the other kind of separation; and besides, you belong to the Burial Society." Siebenkæs stared at him in astonishment.

He went on in a tone of the utmost indifference: "Only I must tell you it will do neither of us much good, if you dawdle a long time at your saddling and bridling, and take a year or two about your dying. I should think it much more to the purpose were you to be off to Kuhschnappel as soon as ever you can, take to your sick-bed and death-bed directly you get there; and die as quickly as ever you can manage it. And I'll give you my reasons. For one thing your Lenette's year of mourning would be out just before Advent, so that she would require no dispensation, if she wanted to marry Peltzstiefel before Christmas. It would suit me very well, too, for I could then disappear in the crowd, and I shouldn't see you again for some considerable time to come. Besides, it is anything but a matter of indifference to yourself, for of course the sooner you're appointed Inspector the better."

"This is the very first of your jokes, dear old Henry," said Siebenkæs, "of which I don't understand one single word."

Leibgeber, with a disturbed countenance, whereon a whole history of the world was legible, and which indicated, as well as gave rise to, the greatest possible anticipation of something of immense importance to come, pulled a letter from his pocket and handed it to Siebenkæs in silence. It was a letter of appointment by the Count von Vaduz, constituting Leibgeber Inspector of the Chief Bailiwick of Vaduz. He next handed him a letter in the count's handwriting. While Firmian was reading the letter, Leibgeber brought out his pocket-diary, and calmly muttered to himself, "From the quarter-day after Whitsunday, it says, does it not? to the time when I am to enter upon my office; that is to say, from to-day--St. Stanislaus' Day. Ah! only think of that--how odd it seems--from St. Stanislaus' day one, two, three, four--_four_ weeks and a half."

Firmian, much pleased, was handing him back the letter, but he wouldn't take it, but pressed it back to him, saying, "I read it long ago, long before _you_ did. Put it in your pocket."

And here Heinrich, in a burst of solemn, impassioned, humoristic enthusiasm, knelt down in the middle of a long narrow path, which looked between the trees of the thick grove like some subterranean passage (the weathercock of the distant steeple ended off the perspective of it as if with a turnstile)--knelt down facing the west, and gazed through the long green hollow way upon the evening sun, sinking earthward like some brilliant meteor, its broad beams darting down upon the long green path, like forest-water gilt by the spring; he gazed fixedly at it, and his eyes all blinded (and lighted up) by its sheen, he began to speak as follows:--

"If there be a good spirit near me, or a guardian angel of mine or of his, or if _thy_ spirit surviveth still thine ashes, oh! my old, _kind_, loving father, so deep in thy grave, then draw near, oh! thou dim and ancient shade, and grant to thy stupid, silly son (still limping about here in this fluttering, ragged shirt of a body) this one, one favour, the first and the last, and enter into Firmian's heart, and (while giving it a good sound shaking) address it as follows: 'Die, Firmian, for my son's sake, though it be but in jest and in appearance only. Throw away your own name, go in his (which was yours before) to Vaduz as Inspector, and give yourself out to be him. My poor son here (like that _Joujou de Normandie_ whereon he is sticking, which circles round the sun upon strings of sunbeams) would fain go whirling about _upon_ said Joujou himself for a little while longer. Before all you parrots the ring of eternity is still hanging, and you can hop on to it and rock upon it if you will. But he does not see the ring; don't deprive the poor Poll-parrot of the pleasure of hopping about on the perch of this earth till, when he has wound his life's thread some sixty times about its reels, the reel gives a ring and a snap, the thread breaks, and all his fun is over and done!' Oh! kind spirit of my father, stir up my friend's heart this day, and guide his tongue, that it may not say 'No,' when I ask him, 'Will you do all this.'" Blinded by the evening sun, he felt for Firmian's hand, crying, "Where's your hand, dear friend? and do not say 'No.'"

But Firmian, quite carried away by emotion (for this sudden outburst of Leibgeber's long pent-up excitement was most contagious), speechless, and all in tears, like an evening shade, knelt down before his friend and fell on his breast, and said in a low tone (for he could do no otherwise), "I am ready to die for you a thousand deaths, any death you please: only say what death I can die for you. All I ask is, tell me plainly what you would have me do. I swear to you beforehand that I will do whatever you tell me; I swear it by your dear father's soul. I will gladly give my life for you, and you know I have nothing but that to give." Heinrich said, in a most unusually subdued voice, "Let's get away in among the Bayreuthians. I certainly have an attack of hydrothorax this afternoon, or else a hot mineral spring inside my waistcoat; 'pon my word, any ordinary heart ought to have a swimming-belt on, or a scaphander, in a vapour-bath of this kind." But up at the table under the trees, among the people come to keep the Whitsuntide fair, the great holiday and festival of spring--up there among people all happy and enjoying themselves, emotion was easier to conquer. Here Heinrich quickly unrolled the ground-plans and elevations of his castle in the air, the building grants of his Tower of Babel. To the Count von Vaduz (whose ears and heart opened and expanded to him hungrily) he had given his sacred word of honour that he would return to him as Inspector. But his idea was that his dear coadjutor and substitute, _cum spe succedendi_, Firmian, should take his place and personate him: Firmian, who was such a tautology of him in mind and body, that both the count, and the theory of distinctive differences itself, would have been puzzled to tell one of them from the other. Even in the worst of years the Inspectorship brought in an income of 1200 thalers; that is to say, the exact amount of Firmian's whole inheritance (now sealed up with the law's leaden signet); so that when Siebenkæs re-assumed his old name of Leibgeber, he would regain just what he had lost by changing it. "For," said Leibgeber, "now that I have read your 'Devil's Papers,' I can't endure or swallow the notion of your lying fallow any longer in Kuhschnappel; sitting there in solitude, like a pelican (or an unicorn, or an unknown hermit) in the wilderness. Now, will it take you as long to think about the matter as it takes the Chief Clerk of the Chancellery there to shake the ashes out of his pipe, when I tell you that, though _you_ are a fellow who could fill any and every office in the world splendidly, there's only one calling I can follow--that of a _Grazioso_; for though I _know_ more than most people, I can't put my knowledge to any practical use except satirising, and my language is a parti-coloured _Lingua Franca_, my head a Proteus, and I myself a delightful compilation of the devil and his grandmother. Besides, if I _could_ do anything else, I _wouldn't_. What, am I, in the very flower of my days, to stamp and neigh, like a state draught-horse, a government prisoner in the donjon-keep, the shoeing travis of some miserable office counting-house, with nothing to look at but my saddle and bridle hanging on the stable-wall, and the loveliest Parnassuses and Tempe valleys wooing the free feet of the sons of the Muses just outside! In the very years when my milk of life is inclined to throw out a little cream--(and the years when a fellow sours and turns to curds and whey come on so fast)--shall I go and throw the rennet of an appointment into my morning milk? Now, as for _you_, _you_ have a different song to sing altogether; you are half a man of office already, and you are married into the bargain. Ah! it will beat all 'Bremish Contributions to the Pleasures of Wit and Understanding;' it will be a business far beyond every existing comic opera, and every funny novel that ever was written, when I go back to Kuhschnappel with you, and you make your will and depart this life. And then when, after we have paid you the last honours, you jump up again (in a good deal of a hurry) and take yourself off to receive greater honours still; not to enter into the bliss of the departed so much as to become a _bonâ fide_ live Inspector; not to appear before a tribunal, but to take your seat upon one yourself. Joke upon joke wherever we turn! I can't quite see _all_ the consequences of it yet, or only in a very half-and-half sort of way; the burial club will have to pay your afflicted widow (you can pay them back again when you're in cash). Death will fop off your ring-finger, all swollen with the betrothal ring. Your widow will be able to marry anybody she pleases (yourself if she likes), and so will you."

Here, all of a sudden, Leibgeber slapped his leg forty times running, and cried, "Ey! Ey! Ey! Ey! Ey! I can hardly wait till you're fairly dead and off the hooks; only think of this, your death may make two women widows instead of one. I will persuade Nathalie to insure herself a pension of 200 dollars a year, payable on your death, in the Royal Prussian Provident Widows' Fund[63] (you can pay them it back again as soon as you get your money). When your widow that is to be gives the Venner the sack, _you_ must privately provide _her_ with a sack of breadfruit. And supposing you really could never pay them back, and were to die in sober earnest, _I_ should take care that their treasury was none the worse for it as soon as I was in funds again." For Leibgeber lived in a constant mysterious state of intermittent fever between riches and poverty (which he has never explained), or, to use his own expression, between the inspiration and expiration of that breath of life (Aura Vitalis) called money. Any other but this man, who played his game of life with such a dashing boldness, whose blazing fire for the true, the right, and the unselfish, had gleamed upon the advocate for so many a year as if from a lighthouse-tower, would have startled Siebenkæs, particularly in his capacity of lawyer, or have made him very angry, instead of over-persuading him. But Leibgeber thoroughly saturated him, nay, burnt him through and through with the etherial playfulness of his humour, and hurried him resistlessly on to the commission of a mimic deception, which had no aim of selfish untruthfulness or deceit.

Firmian, however, notwithstanding his intoxication of mind, retained sufficient control over himself to think, at least, of the risk which Leibgeber would run in this transaction. "Suppose," said he, "anybody should come across my dear _real_ Heinrich (whose name I steal) in the vicinity of me, a coiner of false names, what then?

"Nobody ever will," said Heinrich, "for as soon as you have re-assumed your own canonical name of Leibgeber, and given up 'Firmian Stanislaus,' which was conferred upon me at such a stormy baptismal font (and Heaven grant you may do so!), I shall, under names altogether unheard of--(perhaps, indeed, that I may have the gratification of being able to keep 365 name-days in the course of the year, I shall take every name in the calendar, one after the other)--I shall throw myself off the dry land (under these names or some of them) into the great ocean, and propel myself with my dorsal, ventral, and caudal fins (and any others I may have besides), through the waves and the billows of life towards the thick, muddy sea of death; so that 'twill probably be many a day before we meet again."

He gazed fixedly towards the sun, then sinking in glory beyond Bayreuth; his motionless eyes shone with a moister sheen, and he continued, more slowly, thus: "Firmian, the Almanac says this is St. Stanislaus' Day; it is your name-day, and mine, and the death-day of that wandering, migratory name, because you will have to give it up after your mock death. I, poor devil as I am, would fain be serious to-day--for the first time this many a long year. Go you home, alone, through the village of Johannes; I shall go by the alley; we'll meet again at the inn. By Heaven! everything is so beautiful here, and so rose-coloured, that one would think the Hermitage was a piece of the sun. Don't be very long, though!"

But a sharp pang of pain shot, with swelling folds, athwart Heinrich's face, and he averted that image of sorrow and his blinded eyes--(which were full of radiance, and of water, too)--and marched rapidly off past the spectators, looking as if at something very far away with a face of apparent attention.

Firmian, alone, with tearful eyes, fronted the gentle sunlight dissolving into varied tints over the face of the green-hued world. Close beneath the sun-fire the deep gold-mine of an evening cloud was falling in drops upon the hill-tops which lay under it; the wandering shifting gold of the evening sky lay, all transparently, upon the yellow-green buds and red and white hill-tops, whilst a great, grand, immeasurable smoke, as if of an altar, cast a strange, magic reflection--all shifting, distant, translucent hues--athwart the hills. The hills and the happy earth, reflecting the sun as it sank, seemed to be receiving him in their arms, and taking him into their embrace. But at the moment when the sun dipped wholly beneath the earth, there came (as it were) the angel of a higher light into this gleaming world (which seemed, to Firmian's tearful eyes, to tremble like some flickering fiery meteor of the air); this angel advanced, flashing like day, into the midst of the night-torch-dance of the living, who, at his coming, turned pale, and halted still. But, as Firmian dried his eyes, the sun set, the earth grew stiller and paler yet, and night, dewy and wintry, came forth from the woods.

But that melted heart of his longed for its fellows, and for all whom it knew and loved; it throbbed insatiate in this lonely prison-cell, our life; it yearned to love all humanity. Ah! the soul which has had to give up much, or has lost much, is too, too wretched on such an evening as this.

In a blissful, tranced reverie, Firmian went his way through the blossomy fragrance, among the American flowers which open to the sky of _our_ night, through the closed meadows (chambers of sleep), and under dew-dropping flowers. The moon stood on the pinnacle of the heavenly temple in the midday effulgence which the sun cast up to her from the deeps beneath the earth and her evening-blushes. As Firmian passed through the leaf-hidden village of Johannes (where the houses were all scattered about in a great orchard), the evening bells from the distant hamlets were lulling the slumbering spring to sleep with cradle-songs. Æolian harps, breathed on by zephyrs, seemed to be sending forth their tones from out the evening-red, their melodies flowed softly on into the wide realm of sleep, and there took the form of dreams. Firmian's heart, moved to its very centre, yearned for love--and for very longing he felt impelled to press his flowers into the white hands of a pretty child in Johannes--just that he might _touch_ a human hand.

Go, dear Firmian, with that softened heart of yours, to your deeply-moved friend, whose inner being, too, stretches its arms out towards its likeness; for, to-day, you are nowhere so happy as together. When Firmian entered their common chamber (which, was dark save for the glow of the red twilight in the west), Heinrich turned to meet him; they fell silently into each other's arms and forgot all the tears which burned within them, even those of joy. Their embrace ended, but their silence did not. Heinrich threw himself on his bed, in his clothes, and covered himself up. Firmian sank upon the other bed and wept there, with closed lids. After an hour or two of excited fancy, heated by visions and by pangs of pain, a soft light fell upon his burning eyelids; he opened them, and there hung the pale, glowing moon over against his window. He rose up; but when he saw his friend standing pale and motionless, like a shadow cast by the moon upon the wall--and suddenly there came up from a neighbouring garden (like a nightingale's voice awaking), Rust's melody to the words--

"'Tis not for this earthly land
That Friendship weaves her holy band"--

he fell back under the load of bitter memory; an emotion, too great to bear, a spasm, closed his sad eyes, and he said, in hollow accents,

"Heinrich! oh believe in immortality. How can we love, if we perish!"

"Peace, peace!" said Heinrich. "To-day I am keeping my name-day, and that is enough; for man, certainly, has no birth-day, and, consequently, no death-day either."