Chapter XVII: Preface: To Second Edition (1852) (2)

Old Fontenelle was perhaps in the right when he declared, "If I carried all the ideas of this world in my closed hand, I should take good heed not to open it." For my part, I think differently. If I held all the ideas of the world in my hand, I might perhaps implore you to hew off my hand at once, but in no case would I long keep it closed. I am not adapted to be a jailor of thoughts. By Heaven! I would set them free. Even if they assumed the most threatening shapes and swept through all lands like a band of mad Bacchantes; even if with their thyrsus staffs they should strike down our most innocent flowers; even if they should break into our hospitals and chase the sick old world from its bed! It would certainly grieve me sadly, and I myself should come to harm. For, alas! I too belong to that sick old world; and the poet says rightly that scoffing at our own crutches does not enable us to walk any the better. I am the most sick among you all, and the most to be pitied, for I know what health is. But you know it not, you enviable ones. You can die without noticing it yourselves. Yes, many of you have already been dead for these many years, and you think that now only does the true life begin. When I contradict such madness, then they become enraged against me, and rail at me, and, horrible! the corpses spring on me and reproach me; and more even than their revilings does their mouldy odour oppress me. Avaunt, ye spectres! I am speaking of one whose very name possesses an exorcising power: I speak of Immanuel Kant.

It is said that the spirits of darkness tremble with affright when they behold the sword of an executioner. How, then, must they stand aghast when confronted with Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_! This book is the sword with which, in Germany, theism was decapitated.

To be candid, you French are tame and moderate compared with us Germans. At the most, you have slain a king; and he had already lost his head before he was beheaded. And withal you must drum so much, and shout, and stamp, so that the whole world was shaken by the tumult. It is really awarding Maximilian Robespierre too much honour to compare him with Immanuel Kant. Maximilian Robespierre, the great citizen of the Rue Saint Honoré, did truly have an attack of destructive fury when the monarchy was concerned, and he writhed terribly enough in his regicidal epilepsy; but as soon as the Supreme Being was mentioned, he wiped the white foam from his mouth and the blood from his hands, put on his blue Sunday coat with the bright buttons, and attached a bouquet of flowers to his broad coat-lapel.

The life-history of Immanuel Kant is difficult to write, for he had neither a life nor a history. He lived a mechanical, orderly, almost abstract, bachelor life, in a quiet little side-street of Königsberg, an old city near the north-east boundary of Germany. I believe that the great clock of the cathedral did not perform its daily work more dispassionately, more regularly, than its countryman, Immanuel Kant. Rising, coffee-drinking, writing, collegiate lectures, dining, walking--each had its set time. And when Immanuel Kant, in his grey coat, cane in hand, appeared at the door of his house, and strolled towards the small linden avenue, which is still called "the philosopher's walk," the neighbours knew it was exactly half-past four. Eight times he promenaded up and down, during all seasons; and when the weather was gloomy, or the grey clouds threatened rain, his old servant Lampe was seen plodding anxiously after, with a large umbrella under his arm, like a symbol of Providence.

What a strange contrast between the outer life of the man and his destructive, world-convulsing thoughts! Had the citizens of Königsberg surmised the whole significance of these thoughts, they would have felt a more profound awe in the presence of this man than in that of an executioner, who merely slays human beings. But the good people saw in him nothing but a professor of philosophy; and when at the fixed hour he sauntered by, they nodded a friendly greeting, and regulated their watches.

But if Immanuel Kant, that arch-destroyer in the realms of thought, far surpassed Maximilian Robespierre in terrorism, yet he had certain points of resemblance to the latter that invite a comparison of the two men. In both we find the same inflexible, rigid, prosaic integrity. Then we find in both the same instinct of distrust,--only that the one exercises it against ideas, and names it a critique, while the other applies it to men, and calls it republican virtue. In both, however, the narrow-minded shopkeeper type is markedly manifest. Nature had intended them to weigh out sugar and coffee, but fate willed it otherwise, and into the scales of one it laid a king, into those of the other, a God. And they both weighed correctly.

...Pantheism had already in Fichte's time interpenetrated German art; even the Catholic Romanticists unconsciously followed this current, and Goethe expressed it most unmistakably. This he already does in _Werther_. In _Faust_ he seeks to establish an affinity between man and nature by a bold, direct, mystic method, and conjures the secret forces of nature through the magic formula of the powers of hell. But this Goethean pantheism is most clearly and most charmingly disclosed in his short ballads. The early philosophy of Spinoza has shed its mathematical shell, and now flutters about us as Goethean poetry. Hence the wrath of our pietists, and of orthodoxy in general, against the Goethean ballads. With their pious bear-paws they clumsily strike at this butterfly, which is so daintily ethereal, so light of wing, that it always flits out of reach. These Goethean ballads have a tantalising charm that is indescribable. The harmonious verses captivate the heart like the tenderness of a loving maiden; the words embrace you while the thought kisses you.

...This giant was minister in a lilliputian German state, in which he could never move at ease. It was said of Phidias's Jupiter seated in Olympus, that were he ever to stand erect the sudden uprising would rend asunder the vaulted roof. This was exactly Goethe's situation at Weimar; had he suddenly lifted himself up from his peaceful, sitting posture, he would have shattered the gabled canopy of state, or, more probably, he would have bruised his own head. But the German Jupiter remained quietly seated, and composedly accepted homage and incense.

...When it was seen that such saddening follies were budding out of philosophy and ripening into a baleful maturity--when it was observed that the German youth were generally absorbed in metaphysical abstractions, thereby neglecting the most important questions of the time and unfitting themselves for practical life,--it was quite natural that patriots and lovers of liberty should be led to conceive a justifiable dislike to philosophy; and a few went so far as to condemn it utterly and entirely, as idle, useless, chimerical theorising.

We shall not be so foolish as to attempt seriously to refute these malcontents. German philosophy is a matter of great weight and importance, and concerns the whole human race. Only our most remote descendants will be able to decide whether we deserve blame or praise for completing first our philosophy and afterwards our revolution. To me it seems that a methodical people, such as we Germans are, must necessarily have commenced with the Reformation, could only after that proceed to occupy ourselves with philosophy, and not until the completion of the latter could we pass on to the political revolution. This order I find quite sensible. The heads which philosophy has used for thinking, the revolution can afterwards, for its purposes, cut off. But philosophy would never have been able to use the heads which had been decapitated by the revolution, if the latter had preceded.

...Christianity--and this is its fairest service--has to a certain degree moderated that brutal lust of battle, such as we find it among the ancient Germanic races, who fought, not to destroy, not yet to conquer, but merely from a fierce, demoniac love of battle itself; but it could not altogether eradicate it. And when once that restraining talisman, the cross, is broken, then the smouldering ferocity of those ancient warriors will again blaze up; then will again be heard the deadly clang of that frantic Berserkir wrath, of which the Norse poets say and sing so much. The talisman is rotten with decay, and the day will surely come when it will crumble and fall. Then the ancient stone gods will arise from out the ashes of dismantled ruins, and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes; and finally Thor, with his colossal hammer, will leap up, and with it shatter into fragments the Gothic Cathedrals.

And when ye hear the rumbling and the crumbling, take heed, ye neighbours of France, and meddle not with what we do in Germany. It might bring harm on you. Take heed not to kindle the fire; take heed not to quench it. Ye might easily burn your fingers in the flame. Smile not at my advice as the counsel of a visionary warning you against Kantians, Fichteans, and natural philosophers. Scoff not at the dreamer who expects in the material world a revolution similar to that which has already taken place in the domains of thought. The thought goes before the deed, as the lightning precedes the thunder. German thunder is certainly German, and is rather awkward, and it comes rolling along tardily; but come it surely will, and when ye once hear a crash the like of which in the world's history was never heard before, then know that the German thunderbolt has reached its mark. At this crash the eagles will fall dead in mid air, and the lions in Afric's most distant deserts will cower and sneak into their royal dens. A drama will be enacted in Germany in comparison with which the French Revolution will appear a harmless idyl. To be sure, matters are at present rather quiet, and if occasionally this one or the other rants and gesticulates somewhat violently, do not believe that these are the real actors. These are only little puppies, that run around in the empty arena, barking and snarling at one another, until the hour shall arrive when appear the gladiators, who are to battle unto death.

And that hour _will_ come. As on the raised benches of an amphitheatre the nations will group themselves around Germany to behold the great tournament. I advise you, ye French, keep very quiet then: on your souls take heed that ye applaud not. We might easily misunderstand you, and in our blunt manner roughly quiet and rebuke you, for if in our former servile condition we could sometimes overcome you, much more easily can we do so in the wantonness and delirious intoxication of freedom. Ye yourselves know what one can do in such a condition--and ye are no longer in that condition. Beware! I mean well with you, therefore I tell you the bitter truth. You have more to fear from emancipated Germany than from the whole Holy Alliance, with all its Croats and Cossacks. For, in the first place, you are not loved in Germany,--which is almost incomprehensible, for you are so very amiable, and during your sojourn in Germany took much pains to please at least the better and lovelier half of the Germans. But even if that half should love you, it is just the half that does not bear arms, and whose friendship would therefore avail you but little.

What they really have against you, I could never make out. Once in a beer-cellar at Göttingen, a young Teuton said that revenge must be had on the French for Conrad von Stauffen, whom they beheaded at Naples. You have surely long since forgotten that. But we forget nothing. You see that if we should once be inclined to quarrel with you, good reasons will not be wanting. At all events, I advise you to be on your guard. Let what will happen in Germany, whether the Crown Prince of Prussia or Dr. Wirth hold sway, be always armed, remain quietly at your post, musket in hand. I mean well with you; and I almost stood aghast when I learned lately that your ministry propose to disarm France.

As, notwithstanding your present Romanticism, you are inborn classics, you know Olympus. Among the naked gods and goddesses who there make themselves merry with nectar and ambrosia, you behold one goddess who, although surrounded with mirth and sport, yet wears always a coat of mail, and keeps helm on head and spear in hand.

It is the goddess of wisdom.

FLORENTINE NIGHTS.

[Heine wrote the fragment entitled _Florentine Nights_ in 1835, and published it two years later in the third volume of the _Salon_. It is a series of brilliant pictures united by a very slight thread of connection. There is unquestionably an additional element of autobiographical interest; Maximilian's visits to Potsdam and London correspond to Heine's, and throughout this various record of impressions we frequently hear Heine's own voice. The translation here given has not been previously published.]

FIRST NIGHT.

In the ante-room Maximilian found the doctor just as he was drawing on his black gloves. "I am greatly pressed for time," the latter hurriedly said to him. "Signora Maria has not slept during the whole night; she has only just now fallen into a light slumber. I need not caution you not to wake her by any noise; and when she wakes on no account must she be allowed to talk. She must lie still, and not disturb herself; mental excitement will not be salutary. Tell her all kinds of odd stories, so that she must listen quietly."

"Be assured, doctor," replied Maximilian, with a melancholy smile. "I have educated myself for a long time in chattering, and will not let her talk. I will narrate abundance of fantastic nonsense, as much as you require. But how long can she live?"

"I am greatly pressed for time," answered the doctor, and slipped away.

Black Deborah, quick of hearing as she was, had already recognised the stranger's footstep, and softly opened the door. At a sign from him she left as softly, and Maximilian found himself alone with his friend. A single lamp dimly lighted the chamber. This cast now and then half timid, half inquisitive gleams upon the countenance of the sick lady, clothed entirely in white muslin, who lay stretched on a green sofa in calm sleep.

Silent, and with folded arms, Maximilian stood a little while before the sleeping figure, and gazed on the beautiful limbs which the light garments revealed rather than covered; and every time that the lamp threw a ray of light over the pale countenance, his heart quivered. "For God's sake!" he said softly, "what is that? What memories are awaking in me? Yes, now I know. This white form on the green ground, yes, now...."

At this moment the invalid awoke, and gazing out, as it were, from the depths of a dream, the tender dark-blue eyes rested upon him, asking, entreating.... "What were you thinking of, just now, Maximilian?" she said, in that awful, gentle voice so often found in consumptives, and wherein we seem to recognise the lisping of children, the twittering of birds, and the gurgle of the dying. "What were you thinking of, just then, Maximilian?" she repeated again, and started up so hastily that the long curls, like roused snakes, fell in ringlets around her head.

"For God's sake!" exclaimed Maximilian, as he gently pressed her back on to the sofa, "lie still, do not talk; I will tell you all I think, I feel, yes, what I myself do not know!

"In fact," he pursued, "I scarcely know what I was thinking and feeling just now. Dim visions of childhood were passing through my mind. I was thinking of my mother's castle, of the deserted garden there, of the beautiful marble statue that lay in the grass.... I said, 'my mother's _castle_,' but pray do not imagine anything grand and magnificent. To this name I have indeed accustomed myself; my father always laid a special emphasis on the words, 'the castle,' and accompanied them always with a singular smile. The meaning of that smile I understood later, when, a boy of some twelve years, I travelled with my mother to the castle. It was my first journey. We spent the whole day in passing through a thick forest; I shall never forget its gloomy horror; and only towards evening did we stop before a long cross-bar which separated us from a large meadow. Here we waited nearly half-an-hour before the boy came out of the wretched hut near by, removed the barrier, and admitted us. I say 'the boy,' because old Martha always called her forty years' old nephew 'the lad.' To receive his gracious mistress worthily, he had assumed the livery of his late uncle; and it was in consequence of its requiring a little previous dusting that he had kept us waiting so long. Had he had time, he would have also put on stockings; the long red legs, however, did not form a very marked contrast with the glaring scarlet coat. Whether there were any trousers underneath I am unable to say. Our servant, John, who had likewise often heard of 'the castle,' put on a very amazed grimace as the boy led us to the little ruined building in which his master had lived. He was, however, altogether at a loss when my mother ordered him to bring in the beds. How could he guess that at the 'castle' no beds were to be found, and my mother's order that he should bring bedding for us he had either not heard or considered as superfluous trouble.

"The little house, only one storey high, which in its best days contained, at the most, five habitable rooms, was a lamentable picture of transitoriness. Broken furniture, torn carpets, not one window-frame left entire, the floor pulled up here and there, everywhere the hated traces of the wantonest military possession. 'The soldiers quartered with us have always amused themselves,' said the boy, with a silly smile. My mother signed that we should all leave her alone, and while the boy and John were busying themselves, I went out to see the garden. This also offered the most disconsolate picture of ruin. The great trees were partly destroyed, partly broken down, and parasites were scornfully spreading over the fallen trunks. Here and there by the grown-up box-bushes the old paths might be recognised. Here and there also stood statues, for the most part wanting heads, or at all events noses. I remember a Diana whose lower half the dark ivy grew round in a most amusing way, as I also remember a Goddess of Plenty, out of whose cornucopia mere ill-odorous weeds were blooming. Only one statue had been spared from the malice of men and of time; it had, indeed, been thrown from off its pedestal into the high grass; but there it lay, free from mutilation, the marble goddess with pure lovely features and the noble deep-cleft bosom, which seemed, as it glowed out of the grass, like a Greek revelation. I almost started when I saw it; this form inspired me with a singular feeling, and bashfulness kept me from lingering long near so sweet a sight.

"When I returned to my mother, she was standing at the window, lost in thought, her head resting on her right arm, and the tears were flowing over her cheeks. I had never seen her weep so before. She embraced me with passionate tenderness, and asked my forgiveness, because, owing to John's negligence, I should have no regular bed. 'Old Martha,' she said, 'is very ill, dear child, and cannot give up her bed to you; but John will arrange the cushions out of the coach, so that you will be able to sleep upon them, and he can also give you his cloak for a covering. I shall sleep on the straw; this was my dear father's bed-room; it was much better here once. Leave me alone!' And the tears came still more impetuously.

"Whether it was owing to my unaccustomed place of rest or to my disturbed heart, I could not sleep. The moonlight streamed in through the broken window-panes, and seemed to allure me out into the bright summer night. I might lie on the right or the left side, close my eyes or impatiently open them again--I could still think of nothing but the lovely marble statue I had seen lying in the grass. I could not understand the shyness which had come over me at the sight of it; I was vexed at this childish feeling, and 'To-morrow,' I said softly to myself, 'to-morrow I will kiss you, you lovely marble face, kiss you just on that pretty corner of your mouth where the lips melt into such a sweet dimple!' An impatience I had never before felt was stirring through all my limbs; I could no longer rule the strange impulse, and I sprang up at last with audacious vivacity, exclaiming, 'And why should I not kiss you to-night, you dear image?' Quietly, so that mother might not hear my steps, I left the house; with the less difficulty, since the entrance was furnished with an escutcheon indeed, but no longer with a door, and hastily worked my way through the abundant growth of the neglected garden. There was no sound; everything was resting silent and solemn in the still moonlight. The shadows of the trees seemed to be nailed on the earth. In the green grass lay the beautiful goddess, likewise motionless, yet no stony death, but only a quiet sleep, seemed to hold her lovely limbs fettered; and as I came near, I almost feared lest the least noise should awake her out of her slumber. I held my breath, as I leant over to gaze on the beautiful features; a shuddering pain thrust me back, but a boyish wantonness drew me again towards her; my heart was beating wildly, and at last I kissed the lovely goddess with such passion and tenderness and despair as I have never in this life kissed with again. And I have never been able to forget the fearful and sweet sensation which flowed through my soul as the blissful cool of those marble lips touched my mouth.... And so you see, Maria, that as I was just now standing before you, and saw you lying in your white muslin garments on the green sofa, your appearance suggested to me the white marble form in the green grass. Had you slept any longer my lips would not have been able to resist----"

"Max! Max!" she cried from the depth of her soul. "Horrible! You know that a kiss from your mouth----"

"Oh, be silent only; I know you think that something horrible. Do not look at me so imploringly. I do not misunderstand your feelings, although their causes are hidden from me. I have never dared to press my mouth on your lips."

But Maria would not let him finish speaking; she seized his hand, covered it with passionate kisses, and then said, smiling--"Please tell me more of your love affairs. How long did you adore the marble beauty that you kissed in your mother's castle garden?"

"We went away the next day," Maximilian answered, "and I have never seen the lovely statue again. It occupied my heart, however, for nearly three years. A wonderful passion for marble statues has since then developed in my soul, and this very day I have felt its transporting power. I was coming out of the Laurentian, the library of the Medici, and I wandered, I know not how, into the chapel where that most magnificent of Italian families built for itself a resting-place of jewels, and is quietly sleeping. For a whole hour I was absorbed in gazing on the marble figure of a woman, whose powerful body witnesses to the cunning strength of Michael Angelo, while yet the whole form is pervaded by an ethereal sweetness which we are not accustomed to seek in that master. The whole dream-world, with its silent blisses, lives in that marble; a tender repose dwells in the lovely limbs, a soothing moonlight seems to course through the veins. It is the Night of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. O, how willingly would I sleep the eternal sleep in the arms of that Night!

"Painted women forms," Maximilian pursued, after a pause, "have never so powerfully interested me as statues. Only once was I in love with a painting. It was a wondrously lovely Madonna that I learnt to know at a church in Cologne. I was at that time a very zealous church-goer, and my heart was absorbed in the mysticism of the Catholic religion. I would then have willingly fought like a Spanish knight, at the peril of my life, for the immaculate conception of Mary, the Queen of Angels, the fairest lady of Heaven and earth! I was interested in all the members of the holy family at that time, and I took my hat off in an especially friendly manner whenever I passed near a picture of the holy Joseph. This disposition did not last long, however, and I deserted the Mother of God almost without any explanations, having become acquainted, in a gallery of antiquities, with a Grecian nymph, who for a long time held me enchained in marble fetters."

"And you only loved sculptured or painted women?" said Maria, smiling.

"No, I have also loved dead women," answered Maximilian, over whose face an expression of seriousness had spread. He failed to perceive Maria start and shrink at these words, and quietly proceeded--

"Yes, it is very strange that I once fell in love with a girl after she had been seven years dead. When I became acquainted with little Very I liked her extremely. For three days I occupied myself with this young person, and experienced the greatest pleasure in all that she said and did, and in every expression of her charming wayward being, without being betrayed withal into any over-tender emotion. And so I was not too deeply grieved when a few months later I heard that a fever that had seized her suddenly resulted in death. I forgot her entirely, and I am convinced that from one year's end to another's I had not one thought of her. Seven years passed away, and I found myself at Potsdam, to enjoy the beautiful summer in undisturbed solitude. My society was confined to the statues in the garden of Sansouci. It happened there one day that I recollected certain features, and a singular, lovely way of speaking and moving, without being able to remember to whom they belonged. Nothing is more annoying than such a drifting into old memories, and I was therefore joyfully surprised when, after some days, I recollected little Very, and discovered that it was her dear, forgotten form that had hovered before me so restlessly. Yes, I rejoiced at this discovery like one who unexpectedly meets his most intimate friend; the pale hues gradually grew bright, and at last her sweet little person seemed to stand bodily before me, smiling, pouting, witty, and prettier than ever. From that time forth the sweet vision never left me, it filled my whole soul; wherever I went or stood, that went and stood at my side, spoke with me, laughed with me, always gentle, and yet never over-tender. I was, however, more and more fascinated with this vision, which daily gained more and more reality for me. It is easy to raise ghosts, but it is difficult to send them back again to their dark night; they look at us then so imploringly, our own hearts lend them such powerful intercession. I could not tear myself free, and fell in love with little Very after she had been seven years dead. I lived thus at Potsdam for six months, quite buried in this love. I guarded myself more carefully than ever from any contact with the outer world, and if anyone in the street came at all near me, I experienced the most miserable oppression. I cherished a deep horror of every occurrence, such as, perhaps, the night-wandering spirits of the dead experience; for these, it is said, are terrified when they meet a living man, as much as a living man is terrified when he meets a spectre. By chance a traveller came at that time to Potsdam whom I could not escape--namely, my brother. His appearance and his accounts of the latest news woke me as from a deep dream, and I suddenly felt, with a shudder, in what a frightful solitude I had been so long living. In this condition I had not once noted the change of the seasons, and I now gazed with wonder on the trees, long since leafless, decked in their autumn mellowness. I immediately left Potsdam and little Very, and in another town, where important business was awaiting me, and by means of difficult circumstances and relations, I was soon again plunged into crude reality.

"The living women," Maximilian pursued, while a sorrowful smile played on his upper lip, "the living women with whom I then came into unavoidable contact, how they tormented me, tenderly tormented me with their pouting, jealousy, and constant sighs. At how many balls must I trot round with them, in how much gossip must I mix myself! What restless vanity, what delight in lying, what kissing treachery, what envenomed flowers! These women spoilt all pleasure and love for me, and I was for some time a misogynist, who damned the whole sex. It went with me almost as with the French officer, who, in the Prussian campaign, only saved himself with the greatest difficulty from the ice-pits at Beresina, and since that retains such an antipathy to everything frozen, that now he thrusts away with disgust the sweetest and most delicious of Tortoni's ices. Yes, the remembrance of the Beresina of love that I passed through then spoilt for me, for a time, even the most charming ladies, women like angels, girls like Vanilla sherbert."

"Pray, do not abuse women," exclaimed Maria. "That is a worn-out commonplace among men. In the end, to be happy, you need women after all."

"Oh," sighed Maximilian, "that is true, certainly. But women, unfortunately, have only one way of making us happy, while they have thirty thousand ways of making us unhappy."

"Dear friend," replied Maria, suppressing a little smile, "I am speaking of the concord of two souls in unison. Have you never experienced this joy? But I see an unaccustomed blush spreading over your cheeks. Tell me, Max."

"It is true, Maria, I feel as confused almost as a boy at confessing to you the happy love with which I was once infinitely blessed. That memory is not yet lost to me, and to its cool shades my soul often flies, when the burning dust and day's heat of life grow almost unbearable. Yet I am not able to give you a just idea of her. She was such an ethereal creature that she only seemed revealed to me in dreams. I think that you, Maria, have no vulgar prejudice against dreams; those nightly visions have, in truth, as much reality as the coarser shapes of day, which we can touch with our hands, and by which we are not seldom besmutched. Yes, it was in a dream that I knew that sweet being who has made me most happy on earth. I can say little of her outward appearance. I am not able to describe the form of her features with precision. It was a face that I had never seen before, and that I have never in my life seen since. So much I remember; it was not white and rosy, but all of one colour--a soft, reddened, pale-yellow, transparent as crystal. The charm of this face was not in firm regularity of beauty, nor in interesting vivacity; its characteristic was, rather, a charming, enrapturing, almost terrible veracity. It was a face full of conscious fire and gracious goodness; it was more a soul than a face, and on that account I have never been able to make her outward form quite present to myself. The eyes were soft as flowers, the lips rather pale, but charmingly arched. She wore a silk dressing-gown of a corn-flour blue colour, and in that consisted her entire clothing; neck and feet were naked, and through the thin delicate garment now and then peeped stealthily the slender tenderness of the limbs. Nor can I make plain the words we said to one another; I only know that we betrothed each other, and that we chatted with one another, gay and familiar and open-hearted, like bridegroom and bride, almost like brother and sister. Often we left off talking, and gazed into each other's eyes; we spent whole eternities so. What waked me I cannot say, but I revelled for a long time in the after-feeling of these love-blisses. I was long, as it were, intoxicated with ineffable delight, the pining depth of my heart was filled with bliss, a hitherto unknown joy seemed poured over all my emotions, and I remained glad and joyful, though I never saw the beloved form in my dreams again. But had I not enjoyed whole eternities in her gaze? and she knew me too well not to be aware that I do not like repetitions."

"Truly," exclaimed Maria, "you are an _homme à bonne fortune_. But, tell me, was Mademoiselle Laurence a marble statue or a painting--was she dead or a dream?"

"Perhaps she was all these together," answered Maximilian, very earnestly.

"I can imagine, dear friend, that this sweetheart was of very doubtful character. And when will you tell me the history?"

"To-morrow. It is too long, and I am tired to-night. I have just come from the opera, and have too much music in my ears."

"You often go to the opera now, and I think, Max, you go there more to see than to hear."

"You are not mistaken, Maria; I go to the opera, indeed, to look at the faces of the beautiful Italian women. In truth, they are beautiful enough outside the theatre, and a connoisseur in faces could easily trace in the ideality of their features the influence which the arts have had on the physique of the Italian people. Nature has taken back from the artists the capital she once lent, and see how delightfully the interest has increased! Nature, who once furnished the artists with their model, now on her side copies the masterpieces which have thus arisen. The sense of the beautiful has permeated the whole people, and as once the flesh on the spirit, so now the spirit works on the flesh. The devotion paid before those fair Madonnas and lovely altar-pieces, which impress themselves on the mind of the bridegroom, while the bride bears a handsome saint in her ardent heart, is not fruitless. From this affinity a race has arisen still fairer than the gracious earth on which it flourishes, and the sunny sky that is as bright around it as a golden frame. The men do not interest me much when they are not painted or sculptured, and I resign to you, Maria, all possible enthusiasm in regard to those handsome, supple Italians, who have such wild-black beards, such bold noble noses, and such soft subtle eyes. They say the Lombards are the most handsome men. I have never made any investigations on the subject, but I have earnestly considered the Lombardy women, and they, I have noted well, are indeed as beautiful as report announces. Even in the middle ages they must have been tolerably beautiful. It is said of Francis I. that the fame of the beauty of the Milanese women was a secret motive which impelled him to the Italian campaign; the chivalrous king was certainly curious whether the kinsfolk of his spiritual muses were really as beautiful as fame reported. Poor rogue! he had to atone dearly for this curiosity at Pavia!

"But how beautiful they are, these Italian women, when music illuminates their countenances! I say 'illuminates,' because the effect of the music, which I marked in the opera, on the faces of the beautiful women altogether resembled those light-and-shade effects which surprise us so when we look at statues by torch-light at night-time. These marble forms reveal to us then, with terrifying truth, their indwelling spirit and their horrible dumb secrets. In the same way the whole life of the fair Italian women becomes known to us when we see them in the opera; the changing melodies wake in their souls a succession of emotions, memories, wishes, scandals, which visibly speak in the movements of their features, in their blushes, in their pallors, and even in their eyes. He who knows how to read them may then see in their faces many very sweet and interesting things--histories as remarkable as Boccaccio's tales, emotions as tender as Petrarch's sonnets, caprices as full of adventure as Ariosto's _ottaverime_, sometimes, too, fearful treachery and sublime wickedness as poetic as Dante's _Inferno_. It is worth while to gaze at the boxes. If the men would only express their enthusiasm meanwhile with less frightful sounds! This mad noise in an Italian theatre often annoys me. But music is the soul of these men, their life, their national business. In other countries, certainly, there are musicians who equal the greatest Italian masters, but there is no other musical nation. Here, in Italy, music is not represented by individuals; it manifests itself in the whole population; music has become a nation. With us in the north it is quite different; there music only becomes a man, and is called Mozart or Meyerbeer; and when, moreover, they would accurately investigate what is the best that this northern music offers us, they find it in Italian sunshine and orange-perfume; and much rather than to our Germany those belong to fair Italy, the home of music. Yes, Italy will always be the home of music, even though her great _maestri_ descend early into the grave or become dumb--even though Bellini dies and Rossini keeps silence."

"Indeed," remarked Maria, "Rossini has preserved a very long silence. If I do not mistake, he has been silent for ten years."

"Perhaps that is a joke on his part," answered Maximilian. "He wishes to show that the title, "Swan of Pesaro," which has been conferred upon him, is quite unsuitable. Swans sing at the end of their lives, but Rossini has left off singing in the middle of his life. And I believe that he has done well in that, and shown, even by that, that he is a genius. The artist who has only talent retains to the end of his life the impulse to exercise that talent; ambition stimulates him; he feels that he is constantly perfecting himself, and he is compelled to strive after the highest. But genius has already accomplished the highest; it is content; it contemns the world and small ambition, and goes home to Stratford-on-Avon, like William Shakespeare, or walks about the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, and laughs and jokes, like Giacomo Rossini. If genius has a not altogether badly constituted body, it lives on in this way for a good while after it has given forth its masterpieces, or, as people express it, after it has fulfilled its mission. It is owing to a prepossession that people say that genius must die early; I think that from the thirtieth to the thirty-fourth year has been indicated as the most dangerous period for genius. How often have I bantered poor Bellini on this subject, and playfully prophesied that, being a genius, and having reached that dangerous age, he must soon die. Singular! in spite of the playful tone, he tormented himself about this prophecy; he called me his _jettatore_, his evil eye, and always made the _jettatore_ sign. He so wished to live, he had an almost passionate hatred of death: he would hear nothing of dying; he was frightened of it as a child who is afraid to sleep in the dark.... He was a good, dear child, often rather naughty, but then one only needed to threaten him with an early death, and he would immediately draw in, and entreat, and make with his two raised fingers the _jettatore_ sign. Poor Bellini!"

"So you knew him personally? Was he handsome?"

"He was not ugly. You see, we cannot answer affirmatively when anyone asks us such a question about our own sex. He had a tall, slender figure, which moved in an elegant, I might say a coquettish, manner; always _a quatre épingles_; a long, regular face, with a pale rosiness; very fair, almost golden, hair, put into small curls; very high noble brows, a straight nose, pale blue eyes, a beautifully-chiselled mouth, a round chin. His features had something vague and characterless; something like milk, and in this milk-face often mingled, half sweet, half bitter, an expression of sorrow. This expression of sorrow compensated for the want of soul in Bellini's face, but it was a sorrow without depth; it glistened in the eyes without poetry, it played passionless about his lips. The young _Maestro_ seemed anxious to make this flat, languid sorrow conspicuous in his whole person. His hair was curled in such a fanciful, melancholy way, his clothes sat so languidly about his frail body, he carried his little Spanish cane in so idyllic a way, that he always reminded me of the affected young shepherds with their be-ribboned sticks, and bright-coloured jackets, and pantaloons that we see in our pastorals. And his gait was so young-lady-like, so elegiac, so ethereal. The whole man looked like a sigh _en escarpins_. He had received much applause among women, but I doubt if he anywhere awakened a strong passion. In himself his appearance had something comically unenjoyable, the reason of which lay in his way of speaking French. Although Bellini had lived many years in France, he spoke the language so badly, that even in England it could scarcely be spoken worse. I ought not to call it 'bad;' bad is here much too good. One must call it awful, a violation, something enough to overturn the world. Yes, when one was in society with him, and he mangled the poor French words like an executioner, and displayed, unmoved, his colossal _coq-à-l'âne_, one thought sometimes that the world must fall in with a crash of thunder. The stillness of the grave reigned on the whole room; a death agony was painted on all faces in chalk or in vermilion; the ladies were uncertain whether to faint or to escape; the gentlemen gazed in alarm at their trousers, to convince themselves that they actually had them on; and what was most horrible, this fright raised at the same time a convulsive desire to laugh, which could hardly be suppressed. So that when one was in Bellini's society, his presence inspired a certain anxiety, which by a horrible charm was at once repellant and attractive. Often his involuntary _calembours_ were merely amusing, and in their droll insipidity reminded one of the castle of his fellow-countryman, the Prince of Pallagonia, which Goethe in his _Italian Journey_ has described as a museum of uncouth distortions and absurd deformities. As Bellini on such occasions always imagined he had said something quite harmless and earnest, his face and his words formed the maddest contrast. That which displeased me in his face came at such moments specially prominent. What I disliked could not be exactly described as something lacking, and may not have been displeasing to women at all. Bellini's face, like his whole appearance, had that physical freshness, that bloom of flesh, that rosiness which makes a disagreeable impression on me--on me, because I like much more what is death-like and marble. Later on, when I had known him a long time, I felt some liking for Bellini. This arose after I had observed that his character was thoroughly noble and good. His soul was certainly pure and unspotted by any hateful contagion. And he was not wanting in that good-natured, childlike quality which we never miss in men of genius, even if they do not wear it as an outward show.

"Yes, I remember," Maximilian pursued, sinking down on the chair, on the back of which he had been hitherto leaning--"I remember one moment when Bellini appeared in so amiable a light, that I gazed on him with pleasure, and resolved to become more intimately acquainted with him. But, unhappily, it was the last time I should see him in this life. It was one evening after we had been dining together at the house of a great lady who had the smallest foot in Paris. We were very merry, and the sweetest melodies rang out from the piano. I see him still, the good-natured Bellini, as, at last, exhausted with the mad Bellinism that he chattered, he sank into a seat.... It was a very low one, so that Bellini found himself sitting at the foot, as it were, of a beautiful lady, stretched on a sofa opposite, who gazed down on him with a sweet, malicious delight, as he worked off some French expressions to entertain her, and was compelled, as usual, to communicate what he had said in his Sicilian jargon to show that it was no _sottise_, but, on the contrary, the most delicate flattery. I think the fair lady paid little attention to Bellini's conversation. She had taken from his hand the little Spanish cane with which he often used to assist his weak rhetoric, and was making use of it for a calm destruction of the elegant curl-edifice on the young _Maestro's_ brows. But this wanton occupation was well repaid by the smile which gave her face an expression which I have seen on no other living human countenance. That face will never leave my memory! It was one of those faces which belong more to the kingdom of poetry than to the crude reality of life, contours which remind one of Da Vinci--that noble oval, with the naïve cheek-dimples and the sentimental pointed chin of the Lombard school. The colouring was more soft and Roman, with the dull gleam of pearls, a distinguished pallor, _morbidezza_. In short, it was one of those faces which can only be found in early Italian portraits, which, perhaps, represent those great ladies with whom the Italian artists of the sixteenth century were in love when they created their masterpieces, of whom the poets of those days thought when they sang themselves immortal, and which kindled German and French heroes with desire when they girded on their swords and started across the Alps in search of great deeds. Yes, it was such a face, and on it played a smile of sweetest, malicious delight and most delicate wantonness, as she, the fair lady, with the point of the little Spanish cane destroyed the blonde curls on the good-natured Bellini's brows. At that moment Bellini seemed to me as if touched by an enchanted wand, as if transformed, and he was at once akin to my heart. His face shone with the reflection of that smile; it was, perhaps, the most joyful moment of his life. I shall never forget it. Fourteen days afterwards I read in the papers that Italy had lost one of her most famous sons!

"Strange! At the same time Paganini's death was announced. About his death I had no doubt, for the old, ash-coloured Paganini always looked like a dying man; but the death of the young, rosy Bellini seemed to me incredible. And yet the news of the death of the first was only a newspaper error; Paganini is safe and sound at Genoa, and Bellini lies in his grave at Paris!"

"Do you like Paganini?" asked Maria. "He is the ornament of his country," answered Maximilian, "and deserves the most distinguished mention in speaking of the musical notabilities of Italy."

"I have never seen him," Maria remarked, "but according to report his outward appearance does not altogether satisfy the sense of beauty. I have seen portraits of him."

"Which are all different," broke in Maximilian; "they either make him uglier or handsomer than he is; they do not give his actual appearance. I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true physiognomy on to paper--a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has, with a few strokes of chalk, so well hit Paganini's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. 'The devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music on the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at Hamburg. And is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colours and forms."

"You are one of those men!" exclaimed Maria.

"I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it would perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward appearance. Only with black and glaring strokes could those mysterious features be seized, features, which seemed to belong more to the sulphurous kingdom of shades than to the sunny world of life. 'Indeed, the devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter assured me, as we stood before the Alster pavilion at Hamburg on the day when Paganini gave his first concert there. 'Yes, my friend,' he pursued, 'it is true, as everyone believes, that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to become the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and principally to escape the damnable galley where he had already languished many years. For, you see, my friend, when he was chapel-master at Lucca he fell in love with a princess of the theatre, was jealous of some little _abbate_, was perhaps deceived by the faithless _Amata_, stabbed her in approved Italian fashion, came in the galley to Genoa, and, as I said, sold himself to the devil to escape from it, become the best violin-player, and impose upon us this evening a contribution of two thalers each. But, you see, all good spirits praise God; there in the avenue he comes himself, with his suspicious Famulus!'

"It was indeed Paganini himself, whom I then saw for the first time. He wore a dark grey overcoat, which reached to his feet, and made his figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale, cadaverous face, on which sorrow, genius, and hell had engraved their indestructible lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly prosaic--with rosy, wrinkled face, bright grey little coat with steel buttons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded one of Retzsch's representation of Faust and Wagner walking before the gates of Leipsic. The deaf painter made comments to me in his mad way, and bade me observe especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini. 'Does it not seem,' said he, 'as if he had the iron cross-pole still between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk for ever. See, too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he cannot separate himself from him; a bloody contract binds him to that companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant multitude, indeed, believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and anecdotes, Harris from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only borrowed Herr George Harris's form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his master through the world in a worthier form--namely, as a black poodle.'