Chapter C: T. B (7)

The Lector--who with all his purity and correctness would, nevertheless, without hesitation, have helped a Scarron write his ode on the seat of a duchess--when he would treat the matter of the Count's flight, was at a loss what to make of it, when the latter sprinkled him with some rose-vinegar, and said, "The bad man's father is lying on the board, and one lies before his own iron brow: O, the bad man!" Certainly the physical and moral nearness of the two fair female hearts, and his love for them, had done most to excite the Count against Luigi's artistic cynicism. The Lector merely replied, "He would hear the same at the Minister's and everywhere; and his false delicacy would very soon surrender." "Do the saints," inquired Schoppe, "dwell only _upon_ the palaces and not _in_ them?" For Froulay's bore upon its platform a whole row of stone apostles; and on one corner stood a statue of Mary, which was to be seen from Sphex's house among nothing but roofs.

Youthful Zesara! how does this marble Madonna chase the blood-waves through thy face, as if she were the sister of thy fairer one, or her tutelar and household goddess! But he took care not to hasten his entrance into this _Lararium_ of his soul, namely, the delivery of his father's letter of introduction, by a single whisper, for fear of suspicion; so many missteps does the good man make in the very gentile fore-court of love; how shall he stand in the fore-court of the women, or get a footing in the dim Holy of Holies?

32. CYCLE.

The Court now caused to be made known in writing (it could not speak for sorrow) that the dead Nestor had departed this life. I set aside here the lamentation of the city, together with the rejoicing of the same over the new perspective. The Land-physicus Sphex had to eviscerate the Regent like a mighty beast,--whereas we subjects are served up with all our viscera, like snipes and ground-sparrows, on the table of the worms. At evening, there reposed the pale one on his bed of state,--the princely hat and the whole electrical apparatus of the throne-thunder lay quite as still and cold beside him on a Tabouret; he had the suitable torches and corpse-watchers around him. These Swiss-guards of the dead (the sound of the word rings through me, and I at this moment see Liberty lying on her bed of state in the Alps, and the Swiss guarding her) consist, as is well known, of two regency-counsellors, two counsellors of the exchequer, and so on. One of the exchequer-counsellors was Captain Roquairol. It can be only touched upon here, in the way of interpolation, how this youth, who of financial matters understood little more than a treasury-counsellor in ----h,[52] arose, nevertheless, to be a counsellor in war-matters there,--namely, against his own will, through old Froulay, who (in himself no very sentimental gentleman) was always reviving and retouching the youthful remembrances of the old Prince, because, in this tender mood, one could get from him by begging what one would. How odious and low! so can a poor prince have not a smile, not a tear, not a happy thought, out of which some court-mendicant, who sees it, will not make a door-handle to open something for himself, or a dagger-handle to inflict a wound; not a sound can he utter which some forester and bugle-master of the chase shall not pervert to the purpose of a mouth-piece and tally-ho.

Julienne, at nine o'clock in the evening, visited the only heart which, in the whole court, beat like hers and for hers,--her good Liana. The latter gladly offered her forehead to her commencing sick-headache, and sought only to feel and to still another's pain. The friends, who, before strangers' eyes, only displayed pleasantry, and before each other only a tender, enthusiastic seriousness, sank more and more deeply into this mood before the severe and religious lady of the Minister, who never found in Julienne so much soul as in the soft hour after weeping, as stock-gilliflowers begin to scent the air when they are sprinkled. Not the struggle, but the flight of pain, beautifies the person; hence the countenance of the dead is transfigured, because the agonies have cooled away. The maidens stood enthusiastically together at the window, the waxing moonlight of their fancy was made full moonlight by that of the outer world; they formed the nun's-plan to live together, and go in and out together for life. Often it seemed to them, in this still hour of emotion (and the thought made them shudder), as if the murmuring wings of departed souls swept by over them (it was only a couple of flies, who, with feet and wings, had caught a few tones on the harp of the Minister's lady); and Julienne thought most bitterly of her dead father in Lilar.

At last she begged the sister of her soul to ride with her this night to Lilar, and to share and assuage the last and deepest woe of an orphan. She did it willingly; but the "yes" was hard to extort from the Minister's lady. I see the gentle forms step, from their long embrace in the carriage, out into the mourning chamber at Lilar,--Julienne, the smaller of the two, with quivering eyes and changing color; Liana, more pale with megrim and mourning, and milder and taller than her companion, having completed her growth in her twelfth year.[53]

Like supernatural beings the two maidens beamed upon Roquairol's soul, already burning in every corner. A single tear-drop had power to bring into this calcining oven boiling and desolation. Already this whole evening had he been glancing at the old man with fearful shudderings at the childish end of that faded spirit, which once had been as fiery as his own now was; and the longer he looked, so much the thicker smoke-clouds floated from the open crater of the grave over into his green-blooming life, and he heard therein a thundering, and he saw therein an iron hand glowing and threatening to grasp at human hearts.

Amidst these grim dreams, which illuminated every inner stain of his being, and which sternly threatened him that a day would come, when, in his volcano too, there would remain nothing fruitful but the--ashes, the mournful maidens entered, who, on their way, had wept only over the face that had grown _cold_, and now wept still more heavily over the form that had grown _beautiful_; for the hand of death had effaced from it the lines of the last years,--the prominent chin, the fire-mounds of the passions, and so many pains underscored with wrinkles, and had, as it were, painted upon the earthly tabernacle the reflection of that fresh, still morning light which now invested the disrobed soul. But upon Julienne a black taffeta-plaster on the eyebrows, which had been left behind by a blow,--this sign of wounds made a more violent impression than all signs of healing: she observed only the tears, but not the words of Liana. "O, how beautifully he rests there!" "But why does he rest?" said her brother, with that voice, murmuring from his innermost being, which she recognized as coming from the amateur-stage; and grasped her hand with agitation, because he and she loved each other fervently, and his lava broke now through the thin crust: "for this reason,--because the heart is cut out of his breast, because the wheel is broken at the cistern, because the fire-wheel of rapture, the fountain-wheel of tears, moves therein no more!"

This cruel allusion to the opening of the body wrought terribly on the sick Liana. She must needs avert her eyes from the covered breast, because the anguish cramped the breath in her lungs; and yet the wild man, desolating others as well as himself, who had hitherto been silent by the side of the stiff corpse-guard, went on with redoubled crushing: "Feel'st thou how painfully this cricket-ball of fate, this Ixion's wheel of the wishes, rolls within us? Only the breast without a heart is calm."

At once Liana took a longer and more intense look at the corpse; an ice-cold edge, as if of death's scythe, cut through her burning brain,--the funeral torches (it seemed to her) burned dimmer and dimmer,--then she saw in the corner of the chamber a dark cloud playing and growing up;--then the cloud began to fly, and, full of gushing night, rushed over her eyes,--then the thick night struck deep roots into her wounded eyes, and the affrighted soul could only say, "Ah, brother, I am blind!"

Only hard man, but no woman, will be able to conceive that an æsthetic pleasure at the murderous tragedy found its way into Roquairol's frightful anguish. Julienne left the dead, and her old sorrow, and, with the new one, flung herself around her neck, and moaned: "O my Liana, my Liana! Seest thou not yet? Do look up at me!" The distracted and distracting brother led on the sister, upon whose pale cheeks only single drops fell like hard, cold water, with the sharp question: "Does no destroying angel, with red wings, whiz through thy night; hurls he no yellow vipers at thy heart, and no sword-fish into thy network of nerves, in order that they may be entangled therein, and whet their saw-teeth in the wounds? I am happy in my pain; such thistles scratch us up,[54] according to good moralists, and smooth us down too. Thou anguish-stricken blind one, what say'st thou,--have I made thee truly miserable again?" "Madman!" said Julienne, "let her alone: thou art destroying her." "O, he is not to blame for that," said Liana; "the headache long since made it misty to my eyes."

The friends took their departure in double darkness, and therein will I leave it with all its agonies. Then Liana begged her maiden to say nothing of it to her mother so little time before sleep, since it might, perhaps, go away in the night. But in vain; the Minister's lady was accustomed to close her day on the bosom and lips of her daughter. The latter now came in, led along, and sought her mother's heart with a groping, sidelong motion, and, in this beloved neighborhood, could no longer refrain from a softer weeping; then, indeed, all was betrayed and confessed. The mother first sent for the Doctor before she, with wet eyes and with her gentle arms around her, heard her afflicted daughter's story. Sphex came, examined the eyes and pulse, and made no more of it than a nervous prostration.

The Minister, who had everywhere in the house leading-hounds with fine--ears, came in, upon being informed; and while Sphex stood by, he made, except long strides, nothing but this little note, "_Voyez, Madame, comme votre le Cain[55] joue son rôle à merveille_."

As soon as Sphex had gone out, Froulay let loose several billion-pounders and hand-grenades upon his lady. "Such," he observed, "are the consequences of your visionary scheme of education (to be sure his own, in respect to his son, had not turned out specially well). Why did you let the sick ninny go?" He would himself have still more gladly allowed it from courtly views; but men love to blame the faults which they have been saved the trouble of committing; in general, like head-cooks, they had rather apply the knife to the _white_- than to the _dark_-feathered fowl. "_Vous aimez, ce me semble, à anticiper le sort de cette reveuse un peu avant qu'il soit decidé de nôtre._"[56] Her silence only made him the more bitter. "_O, ce sied si bien à votre art cosmétique que de rendre aveugle et de l'être, le dieu de l'amour s'y prête de modèle._" Wounded by this extreme severity,--especially as the Minister himself had chosen and commanded this very _cosmetic_ education of Liana, against the maternal wishes, to gratify his political ones,--the mother had to go and hide and dry her wet eyes in her daughter's bosom. Married men and the latest literati regard themselves as flints, whose power of giving _light_ is reckoned according to their _sharp corners_. Our forefathers ascribed to a diamond belt the power to kindle love between spouses. I also still find in jewels this power; only this stone (which appertains to the flint species) leaves one, after the marriage-compact, as cold and hard as it is itself. Probably Froulay's marriage-bond was one of such precious stone.

But the lady only said, "Dear Minister, leave we that! only spare you the sick one." "_Voilà précisement ce qui fût votre affaire_," said he, laughing scornfully. In vain did Liana eloquently and touchingly pour out to him her mistaken yet moving convictions, (aimed at the wall, however,) and plead for her brother, which everlasting advocacy of all sorts of people (which proved too much) was her only failing;--all in vain, for his sympathy with an afflicted one consisted in nothing but fury against the tormentors, and his love toward Liana showed itself only in hatred of the same. "Peace, fool! But _Monsieur le Cain_ comes not into my house, madam, till further orders!" Out of forbearance, I say nothing further to the old conjugal bully than go--to the devil, or at least to bed.

33. CYCLE.

The German public may still remember the _obligato-sheets_ promised in the Introductory Programme, and ask me what has become of them. The foregoing Cycle was the first, most excellent Public; but see through the matter, how it is with obligato-sheets, and that perhaps as much history lies therein as in any one Cycle, however it may be called.

The Count had not yet learned anything of Liana's misfortune, when he, with the others, went down to the dinner of the Doctor, who to-day was very hospitable. They found him seized with a most violent fit of laughter, his hands thrust into his sides, and his eyes bent over two little ointment vessels on the table. He stood up, and was quite serious. The fact was, he found in Reil's Archives of Physiology, that, according to Fourcroy and Vauquelin, tears dye violet-juice green, and therefore contain alkali. In order to prove the proposition and the tears, he had thrown himself into a chair, and laughed in right hearty earnest, so as afterward to cry and get a drop or two for the brine-gauge of the proposition; he would gladly have wrought himself into another kind of emotion, but he understood his own nature, and knew that nothing could be got out of it so,--not a drop.

He left the guests alone a moment,--the lady was not yet to be seen,--Malt sat on an ottoman,--the children had satirical looks,--in short, Impudence dwelt in this house as in her temple. Ridicule had no effect upon the old man, and he only countermanded what displeased himself, not what displeased others.

At length the rosy-cheeked wife of the physician flourished into the apartment,--as preparatory course or preamble of the dinner,--with three or four _esprits_ or _feathers in her cap_,--with a dapple neck-apron,--in a red ball-dress, from which waltzing had taken out the color in which she had rouged,--and with a perforated fancy-fan. If I wished, I could be interested in her; for, touching these _esprits_ (since the _esprit_, like the brain in Embrya, often sets itself upon the brain-pan, and there suns itself), she thought women and partridges were best served up at table with feathers on their heads; touching the fan, she meant to have it understood she had just come from a morning call (whereby she very clearly implied that ladies could no more go through the streets without their fan-stick than joiners without their rule); touching the rest, she knew the guest was a Count. Accordingly, it appears that she belongs to the honorables, who (for the most part), like rattlesnakes, are never better to be enjoyed than when one has previously put the head out of the way; but that we have still time enough to believe, when we come to understand her better.

The beautiful Zesara was for her blind, deaf, dumb, destitute of smell, taste, feeling; but there are many women whom one cannot, with the greatest pains and tediousness, displease; Schoppe could do it more easily. Sphex, for his own personal predilections, made more out of a cell of fat in Malt than out of the whole cellular texture of a lady, even of his own; like all business people, he held women to be veritable _angels_, whom God had sent for the ministration of the saints (the business men).

The dinner course began. Augusti, a delicate eater, enjoyed much, and took not only to the fine service, but to the torn napkins; the like of which he had often had in his lap at court, because there, in morals and in linen, rents are preferred to plasters. Soon, as usual, came forth even the outposts and first skirmishes of miserable dishes, the common prophets and forerunners of the best tit-bits, although at a hundred tables I have cursed them, that they did not, like good monthly magazines, give the best pieces first, and the most meagre last. The Doctor had already said to the three boys,--"Galen, Boerhave, Van Swieten, what is the polite way of sitting?" and the three physicians had already shoved three right hands between the waistcoat buttons, and three left hands into the waistcoat pockets, and sat waiting, "bolt upright" when good chap-sager was brought in for the dessert. Sphex partly expressed pleasure in cheese, partly a horror of it, just as he found it in the way of his shop-business. He remarked, on one hand, how joiners, in their glue-pot, had no better glue than what stood here before them,--it had just that binding quality in a man,--yet he would rather, for his own individual self, with Dr. Junker, apply it externally, like arsenic; but he also confessed, on the other hand, that the chap-sager for the Lector was poison. "I would pledge myself for it," said he, "that you, if one could examine you, would be found hectic! the long fingers and the long neck speak in my favor, and particularly are white teeth, according to Camper, a bad sign. Persons, on the contrary, who have a set of teeth like my lady there may feel safe."

Augusti smiled, and merely asked the Doctor's lady, at what time one could best gain access to the Minister.

Such poisonous reflections, as well as cats'-dinners,[57] he gave out, not from satirical malice, but from mere indifference to others, whom, like an honest man, he never suffered in the least to sway him in his actions. With the liberty-cap of the doctor's hat on his head, he received, from his medical indispensableness, so many academic freedoms, that he, between his four house-walls, ate and acted not more freely than between the showy, bristling pale-work of the court. Did he ever there--I ask that--let a drop of sweet wine pass his lips without previously drawing out an Ephraimite, which did not itself outlive the probation-day, and hanging it in the glass, merely to prove before the court whether the Ephraimite therein did not grow black? And if the silver did so, was there not as good as a demonstration of the wine being oversmoked, and could not the physician have _applied_ the whole right neatly, court, sweetness, blackening, poisoning, and oversmoking, if he had been the man to do it?

The Lector's accidentally inquiring about the time of seeing the Minister was what Albano had to thank for saving him from first learning the painful misfortune in the house of the Minister, or in the presence of the blind girl herself. "You can," answered Sara, the Doctoress, "also despatch the servant; he will subscribe for you all; I, however, pity none as I do the daughter." Now broke loose a storm of questions about the unknown accident. "It is so," began the physician, sulkily; but soon (because he saw in some eyes water for his mill, and because he sought to roll off all medical blame from himself upon Captain Roquairol) he set himself as well as he could to pathetic detail, and lied almost like a sentimentalist. With an unobserved hint to the _affected_ lady, he pushed an empty dish towards her as a lachrymatory, in order that nothing might be lost. From the eclipsed eyes of the vainly struggling youth, this first woe of his life snatched some great drops. "May recovery be possible?" asked Augusti, exceedingly troubled, on account of his connection with the family.

"Certainly; it is a mere affection of the nerves," replied Schoppe, briskly, "and nothing more." Whytt relates, that a lady who had too much acid in her stomach (in the _heart_ it were still worse) saw everything in a _cloud_, as girls do at the approach of sick-headache. Sphex, who had lied only for the sake of pathos and alkali, and who was vexed that the Librarian should have been of his private opinion, answered just as if the latter had not spoken at all. "The highest degree of consumption, Mr. Lector, often winds up with blindness, and it were well, in this case, to prescribe for both. Meanwhile I am acquainted with a certain periodical nervous blindness. I had the case in a lady[58] whom I brought out of it merely by blood-letting, smoke of burnt coffee, and the evening fog from the water; this we are now trying again in the case of our nervous patient. A dutiful physician will, however, always wish the devil would take mother and brother."

In other words, the return of Liana's periodical malady almost distracted him. Offences against his honor, his love, his sympathy, never wrought the Physicus into a heat; through all such he kept on his glazed frost surtout; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to the degree of flying to pieces; and so are we all a kind of Prince-Rupert's-drops, which can bear the hammer and never break, till one just breaks off the little thread point, and they fly into a thousand splinters; with Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the medical D.'s ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor now shook out the contents of his heart, as some call their gall-bladder; he swore by all the devils he had done more for her than any and every physician,--he had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid education--merely to look well and pray and read and sing--would prove a cursed poor economy,--he had often longed to break the harmonica-bells and tambour-needles,[59]--he had often called the attention of the mother, with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to Liana's so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright redness of cheeks, and velvet-soft skin; but had seemed to himself, by so doing, almost to gratify more than to distress her. The only thing that delighted him was, that the maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to keep her away, because he had already experienced, in the case of a fourth patient, the most melancholy consequences from this holy act.

To the astonishment of every one my Count took part against all with Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms were even now whirling round imprisoned in thy bosom, without a friendly hand to give them an outlet, and thou wouldst cover thy bloody grief! And wast thou not seeking a spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for thine own, and wouldst thou not rather have entered into brotherhood with a thundering hell-god than with an insipid pietistical saint, forever gnawing like a moth? Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with the Prince's heart?" "I have it not," said Sphex, startled; "it lies in _Tartarus_,[60] although it would have been more profitable to science had one been permitted to put it among one's preparations; it was large and very singular." He was thinking how often--when he could--he had, as an augur, during the dissection, secretly slipped aside one or another important member--as a princely or a cavalier-robber, _à la minutta_--for his study,--a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for himself with his anatomical honey-knife.

"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy passion, or anything of the sort?" inquired Schoppe. "More than one," said Sphex; "cripples, idiots, young orphans, blind Methusalems,--all these passions she has. Sports and young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be better for her health."

But on this point, in the requirement of cheerfulness, I give in to him. Joy is the only universal tincture which I would prepare; it works uniformly as _antispasmodicum_, as _glutinans_ and _astringens_. The oil of gladness serves as ointment for _burns_ and _chills_ at once. Spring, for example, is a spring-medicine; a country-party, an oyster-medicine; a recreation at the watering-places is, in itself, a glass of _bitters_; a ball is a _motion_; a carnival, a _course_[61] of medicine;--and hence the seat of the _blest_ is at the same time the seat of the _immortals_.

"Yes, he had finally," the Doctor concluded,--"as they were people of rank,--prescribed a dose of _pride_ (of the meadows), which manifests all the officinal healing powers of joy; taken in a stronger dose, it works fully as well as enjoyment itself, enlivens the pulse, steels the fibres, opens the pores, and chases the blood through the long venous labyrinth.[62] In the case of his weakly lady, such as they saw her there, he had used, he said, this medicament long ago by dresses and a doctor's rank, and had helped her to her legs thereby. But he would rather cure sixty common women than one distinguished one,--and he should regret, as family physician, merely his receipts and medical opinions, in case, as he certainly believed, the fair Liana should go hence."

The first question which Albano, who never missed anything that was said, put to Augusti on the way back from the Doctor's, was, What the Doctor's wife meant by the subscribing servant? He explained it. There is, namely, in Pestitz, as in Leipsic, an observance, that when a man dies or falls into any other misfortune, his family place a blank sheet of paper, with pen and ink, in the entrance-hall, in order that persons, who take and show a nearer interest, may send a lackey thither, to set their names on the paper as well as he knows how; this merchant-like indorsement of the nearer interest, this descending representative system by means of servants, who are generally, now-a-days, the telegraphs of our hearts, sweetens and alleviates for both cities great sorrow and sympathy through pen and ink.

"What! is that it? O God!" said Alban, and grew unusually indignant, as if people were forcing servants upon him as chrysographs and business-agents of his feelings. "O ye egotistical jugglers! through the pen of scribbling lackeys do ye pour yourselves out? Lector, I would condole with Satan himself more warmly than thus!"

Why is this veiled spirit so lively and loud? Ah, everything had moved him. Not merely lamentation over poor Liana, persecuted by all the nightly arrows of destiny, entered like iron into his open heart, but also amazement at the gloomy intermingling of fate with his young life. Roquairol's ever-recurring expression, "_Breast without a heart_," sounded to him as if it must be familiar; at last the converse of the expression came to his thoughts, the word of the Sphinx on the island, "_Heart without a breast_." So, then, even this riddle was solved, and the place fixed, when he was to hear, contrary to every expectation, the prophecy of the loved one; but how incomprehensible,--incomprehensible!

"O yes! Liana she is called, and no God shall change the name," said his innermost soul. For in earlier years even the most vigorous youth prefers, in maidens, interesting delicacy of health and a tender fulness of feeling and a moisture of the eye,--just as, in general, at Albano's age, one values the flood (later the ebb) of the eyes too highly, although, too often, like an over-rich inundation, they wash away the seed-corns of the best resolutions;--whereas, at a later period, (because he proposes to himself marriage and housekeeping,) he looks out rather for bright and sharp than after moist eyes, and for cold and healthy blood.

As Albano, for the most part, drew down the fire from his internal clouds on the discharging chains of the harpsichord strings,--seldomer into the Hippocrene of poetry,--so did he now unconsciously make out of his inner _charivari_ a passage on the harpsichord. I transpose his fantasy into my fancy in the following manner. On the softest minor-tones the blindness, with its long pains, passed by, and in the whispering-gallery of music he heard all the soft sighs of Liana repeated aloud. Then harder minor-tones led him down into Tartarus, to the grave and heart of the friendly old man who had once prayed with him, and then, in this spirit-hour, fell softly, like a dew-drop from heaven, the sound, Liana! With a thunder-clap of ecstasy he fell into the major-key, and asked himself, "This delicate, pure soul could fate promise to thy imperfect heart?" And when he answered himself, that she would perhaps love him, because she could not see him,--for first love is not vain; and when he saw her led by her gigantic brother, and when he thought of the high friendship which he would give and require of _him_; then did his fingers run over the keys in an exalting war-music, and the heavenly hours sounded before him, which he should enjoy, when his two eternal dreams should pass over livingly out of night into day, and when brother and sister should furnish at once, to his so youthful heart, a loved one and a friend. Here his inner and outer storms softly died away, and the evenly-balanced _temperament_ of the instrument became that of the player....

But a soul like his is more easily appeased with sorrow than with joy. As if the reality had already arrived, he pressed on still further; indescribably fair and unearthly, he saw Liana's image trembling in her cup of sorrow; for the crown of thorns easily ennobles a head to a Christ's head, and the blood of an undeserved wound is a redness on the cheek of the inner man, and the soul which has suffered too much is easily loved too much. The tender Liana appeared to him as already spun into the funeral veil for the Flora of the second world, as the tender limbs of the bee-nymph lie transparently folded over the little breast,--the white form of snow, which had once, in his dream, melted away on his heart, opened the bright little cloud again, and looked, blind and weeping, upon the earth, and said, "Albano, I shall die before I have seen thee."--"And even if thou shouldst never see me," said the dying heart in his breast, "yet will I still love thee. And even if thou shouldst soon pass away, Liana, still I gladly choose sorrow, and walk faithfully with thee till thou art in heaven."... Heaven and hell had both at once drawn aside their curtains before him,--only a few notes, and those the same as before, and only the highest, and that only interruptedly and faintly, could he any longer strike; and at last his hands sank down, and he began to weep, but without too severe pangs,--as the storm which has unburdened itself of its lightnings and thunders stands now over the earth only as a soft, diffused rain.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] One who dedicated a new house (somewhat as we name a ship). The _glass fire-bucket_ which _quenched the inner conflagration_ was probably the wine-glass or beer-tumbler.--TR.

[46] Collegians.--TR.

[47] Provincial Physician.--TR.

[48] According to Camper, hectic patients have very white and fair teeth.

[49] Derham (in his Physico-Theology, 1750) observes that the deaf hear best under a noise; e. g. one hard of hearing, under the sound of bells; a deaf housewife, under the drumming of the house-servant. Hence when princes and ministers, who for the most part hear badly, are passing through the country, kettle-drums are beat and cannon fired, so that they can hear the people more easily.

[50] In whose wall the lady with the souvenir sits.

[51] A kind of gray fur.--TR.

[52] Baireuth.--TR.

[53] This precocious completion of growth I have observed in many distinguished women, just as if these Psyches should resemble butterflies, which do not grow after coming out of the chrysalis state.

[54] Cloth is roughened with thistles, i.e. scratched up, in order to the better shearing of it afterwards.

[55] A distinguished actor of tragedy.

[56] He means here their divorce, which was only deferred by the mutual wish to keep Liana.

[57] Poor dinners, just as cat-silver is an inferior metal.--TR.

[58] A weak-nerved lady (I know not whether it is the same) who had much religion, fancy, and suffering, became, as she tells me, blind in the same way, and was cured in the same way.

[59] The eternal pricking of the sensitive finger-nerves by knitting, tambour, and other needles, perhaps as much as the touching of the harmonica-bells, makes one, by stimulating, weak in the nerves.

[60] Tartarus is the melancholy part of Lilar.

[61] Kursus--corso.--TR.

[62] Pride of the meadows quickens the circulation of the blood even to frenzy. This whole observation on the pharmaceutic value of pride of the meadows is taken from Tissot's "Traité sur les Nerfs."

SIXTH JUBILEE.

THE TEN PERSECUTIONS OF THE READER.--LIANA'S EASTERN
ROOM.--DISPUTATION UPON PATIENCE.--THE PICTURESQUE CURE.

34. CYCLE.

Postulates--apothegms--philosophems--Erasmian adages--observations of Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lavater, do I in one week invent in countless numbers, more than I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my biographical _petits soupés_ as episode-dishes. Thus does the lottery-mintage of my _unprinted_ manuscripts swell higher and higher every day, the more extracts and winnings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In this way I creep out of the world without having, while in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course; he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under the title of manuscripts (just as we, inversely, despatch manuscripts to the publishers by mail under the title of printed matter) circulate even among the _literati_.

But why shall I not do the same, and let at least one or two lymphatic veins of my water-treasure leap up and run out? I limit myself to ten persecutions of the reader,--calling my ten aphorisms thus, merely because I imagine the readers to be martyrs of their opinions, and myself the Regent who converts them by force. The following aphorism, if one reckons the foregoing as the first persecution, is, I hope, the

_SECOND._

Nothing sifts and winnows our preferences and partialities better than an imitation of the same by others. For a genius there are no sharper polishing-machines and grinding-disks at hand than his apes. If, further, every one of us could see running along beside him a duplicate of himself, a complete Archimimus[63] and repeater in complimenting, taking off the hat, dancing, speaking, scolding, bragging, &c.; by Heaven! such an exact repeating-work of our discords would make quite other people out of me and other people than we are at present. The first and least step which we should take toward reflection and virtue would be this, that we should find our bodily methodology, e. g. our walk, dress, dialect, our oaths, looks, favorite dishes, &c., no better than those of all others, but just the same. Princes have the good fortune that all courtiers around them station themselves as faithful supernumerary copyists and pier-mirrors of _their_ selves, and propose to improve them by this Helot-mimicry. But they seldom attain their good end, because the Prince,--and that were also to be feared of me and the reader,--like the principle of _non-distinguendum_, does not believe in any real twins, but imagines that in morals, as in catoptrics, every mirror and mock rainbow shows everything _inverted_.

_THIRD._

It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.

_FOURTH._

In the centuries before us humanity appears to us to be growing up; in those which come after us, to be fading away; in our own, to burst forth in glorious bloom: thus do the clouds, only when in our zenith, seem to move straight forward, those in front of us come up from the horizon, the others behind us sail downward with fore-shortened forms.

_FIFTH._

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.[64]

_SIXTH._

The old age of women is sadder and more solitary than that of men; spare, therefore, in them their years, their sorrows, and their sex! In fact, life often resembles the trap-tree with its spines directed upward, on which the bear easily clambers up to the honey-bait, but from which he can slide down again only under severe stings.

_SEVENTH._

Have compassion on Poverty, but a hundred times more on Impoverishment! Only the former, not the latter, makes nations and individuals better.

_EIGHTH._

Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.

_NINTH._

When two persons, in suddenly turning a corner, knock their heads together, each begins anxiously to apologize, and thinks only the other feels the pain and that he himself has all the blame. (Only I excuse myself without any embarrassment, for the very reason that I know, by my persecutions, how the other party thinks.) Would to God we did not invert this in the case of moral offences!

_LAST PERSECUTION OF THE READER._

Deluded and darkened man, living on from the mourning veil to the corpse-veil, thinks there is no further evil beyond that which he has immediately to overcome; and forgets that after the victory the new situation brings a new struggle. Hence, as before swift ships there swims a hill of water and a corresponding billowy abyss glides along close behind, so always before us is there a mountain, which we hope to climb, and behind us still a deep valley out of which we seem to have ascended.

Thus does the reader vainly hope now, after having stood out ten persecutions, to ride into the haven of the story, and there to lead a peaceable life, free from the troubled one of my characters; but can any spiritual or worldly arm, then, protect him against scattered similes,--against hemispherical headaches,--whimsies,--reviews,--curtain-lectures,--rainy months,--or in fact honey-moons, which come in at the end of every volume?--

Now for our History! In the evening Albano and Augusti went with the paternal letter of credit to the Minister's. The frostiness and pride of that individual the Lector endeavored, on their way, to varnish over by praising his laboriousness and discernment. With a knocking at his heart the Count seized the door-knocker to the heaven- or hell-gate of his future destiny. In the antechamber--that higher servant's apartment and _Limbus infantum et patrum_--there were still people enough, for Froulay regarded an antechamber as a stage, which must never be empty, and on which, as in the Jewish temple, according to the Rabbins, for those who kneel and pray, it is never too close. The Minister's lady was not present as a patient here, merely because she was looking after one of her own elsewhere. The Minister also was not here,--because he made few ceremonies, and only demanded uncommonly many,--but in his working-cabinet; he had heretofore had his head under the warm throne-canopy and taken a deep bite into the forbidden apple of the Empire, therefore he willingly made a sacrifice (not _to_ others, but _of_ others), and let himself, as a saintly statue, be hung round with votive limbs, without having to bestir his own, and, like St. Franciscus at Oporto, with letters of thanks and petitions which he never opens.

Froulay came, and was--as ever, _aside_ from business--as courteous as a Persian. For Augusti was his home friend,--i. e. the Minister's lady was _his_ home-friend,--and Albano was not a good person to run against; because one had occasion for his foster-father in the votes of the Province, and because the youth by a peculiar and proper pride of his own commanded men. There is a certain noble pride through which merits shine brighter than through modesty. Froulay had not the most comfortable part before him; for the Court of Haarhaar was as disaffected toward the Knight of the Fleece, as he was toward it;[65] but Haarhaar was to be without doubt (according to all Italian _surgical_ reports) and in a few years (according to all _nosological_ ones) the heir of his inheritance and throne. Now the bad thing about it was, that the Minister, who, like a good Christian, looked mainly to the future, had to creep along between the German Herr von Bouverot, on the one hand, who was secretly a creature of Haarhaar, and the demands of the present moment, on the other.

He received the Count, I said, in an uncommonly obliging manner, as well as the Lector, and disclosed to the two that he must present to them his lady, who desired their acquaintance. He sent word to her, but, without waiting an answer, conducted them both into her apartment. Now was it to the youth as if the heavy door of a still and holy temple turned on its hinges. Even I too, at this moment, during their passage through the rooms, share so in his foolishness that I fall into full as great anxiety, as if I went in behind them. When we entered the eastern room, which was extended out at pleasure by picturesque paper-tapestry into a latticed arbor of woodbine, there sat merely the Minister's lady, who received us pleasantly, with firm and cold reserve in look and tone. Her severely closed and faintly-marked lips mutely spoke a seriousness which is the gift of a good heart, and a stillness which is the ornament of beauty,--as many wings, only when they are folded, shower down peacocks'-eyes,--and her eye gleamed with the good-will of reason; but the eyelids had been, by stern years, drawn deeply in, with a sickly expression, over the mild sight. Ah, as oftentimes between newly-married people a dividing sword was laid, so did Froulay grind daily at a three-edged one which separated him and her! Singularly did the impure roil on his face contrast with the aftersummer serenity on hers, although before witnesses, as it seemed, he took away the irony from his courteousness towards her, and kept hatred, as others do love, only for solitude.

Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwholesome, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded entirely with her religious one; especially as only he could ask and condole with her about Liana. She replied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many traces of the beloved object's presence! I confess, except a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-room in her absence.

On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a Christ's head near the open Messiah,--a folded walking-veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed wishes of female friends,--some cut-out envelopes,--the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants,--a whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed to please Dian's children,[66]--a plucked leaf from the thinning album of a female friend, which she had trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly would I sketch and hand round something like a tabular view of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters! But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingrafting-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns. O, _these_ had destiny only too fully developed on thy roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through thy breast even to the heart!

At no hour of his life was Albano's love so tender and holy as at this, or his sympathy so fervent. Fortunately, the Minister's lady was all the time looking out of the window into the garden, and did not perceive his emotion. At last she went on to point out Liana's harmonica, which stood near; then was his heart too full and visible; he started with the hasty words, _he had never yet heard one_, and stepped before it. Ah, he was fain to touch something whereon her finger had so often rested. He laid his hand, as upon a sacred thing, on those prayer-bells which had so often trembled under hers for pious thoughts; but they gave him no answer, till the Lector, a connoisseur in the A B C as in the technology of all arts, gave him in three words the indispensable instructions. Now did he drink into his soul, full of sighs and struggles, the first tri-clang, the first plaintive syllables of that mother-tongue of the pining breast,--ah, of those _mutes'-bells_ which the inner man shakes in his hand, because he has no tongue! and his veins beat wildly like wings which wafted him up from the ground, and bore him to a higher prospect than that which opens into the last joy or the last agony. For in strong men great pains and joys become overlooking heights of the whole road of life.

I know not whether many readers will believe the fault _possible_, which he now _actually_ committed. The Minister's wife, in the course of conversation, had very naturally--_apropos_ of Liana and Roquairol--fallen upon the proposition that no school is more necessary to children than that of patience, because, either the will must be broken in childhood or the heart in old age. Ah, she and her daughter themselves knelt, indeed, full of patience, before fate, whether loading or armed; although the mother's was a pious patience, which looked more to Heaven than to the wound, Liana's a loving patience, which resigns itself to new sorrows as to old sicknesses, as a queen does on coronation-day to the pains and friction of her heavy jewelry, and like a child that sweetly sleeps away and more sweetly dreams away his scars. But Zesara, who like a wolf fled the very clanking of a chain, and new, exasperated, against everything of the kind, from the light carcanets and chains of knighthood even to the heavy harbor-chains which obstruct the passage of youth out into the laboring sea, could not restrain himself, especially with that heart of his so full of emotions, from saying, in too great warmth: "Man must defend himself; sooner would I, in a free struggle, empty all my veins on the stirring battle-field than shed one drop from them bound to the rack."--"Patience," said the Minister's lady, who was full of it, "contends and conquers also, only in the heart."--"Dear Count," said Augusti, alluding not merely to Arria,[67] "the women must always say to the men, 'It does not hurt!'"

I have not till now had an opportunity to make known this fault of Albano, that he never spoke his opinion more freely and strongly than just then when he had reason to fear losing one or two heavens of his life by the stake; in cases of less danger he could be more yielding. Although, therefore, he observed that the Minister's lady was painfully reminded thereby of the muscular, but also hard-grasping, hand of her wild son,--or much rather _for the very reason_ that he observed it, and because he proposed to be armor-bearer to this future friend,--he stuck to his opinion, threw all instruments for breaking in the young manly will out of the school-rooms into the street, and said, in his strongly relieved style: "The Goths preferred never to send their children to school, in order that they might remain lions. Even if maidens must be soaked in milk a day before planting them out in the civil world, boys, however, must be stuck, like apricots, with the stony shell in the earth, because they will soon enough throw off and forsake the stone by their rooting and growth."--The Lector, with his fine openness,--a crystal vase with golden edge,--remarked, with a gentle reprimand of Alban's impetuosity, that at least the way in which they had severally adduced their proofs was one of those very proofs themselves; and women needed and showed more patience with persons, and we more with things.

The Minister's wife, who imagined herself listening more to her son than to his friend, was silent, and stepped nearer to the window. Amid these war-troubles the evening had wheeled her resplendent moon up over the eastern mountains, and the streams of her light flowed in at this moment, from all quarters, through the whole garden that lay stretched out before the eastern room, and lay in its broad alleys and flower-circles, when all at once a little round house appeared through upshooting water-jets, kindled into triumphal arches by the moon-light, and stood, even to its Italian trellised roof, all in a blaze. With soft emotion, the Minister's lady said: "On that water-house stands my Liana; she is trying the evaporation of the fountain; the physician promises himself much therefrom. And Providence grant it!"

But the agitated Zesara, with all his sharp eyes, could not, however, in the full dazzling light of the level moon, and behind the quivering nunnery-grate of confined silver-or lymphatic-veins, individualize anything at this moment from the glimmering Eden, except an undistinguishable, still, white form. But it was enough for a weeping and burning heart. "Thou angel of my youthful dreams," thought he, "may it be thou! I greet thee with a thousand woes and joys. Ah! can there then be sorrows in thee, thou heavenly soul!" And it came over him, that if she were here in the room, with her afflicted and enchanting form, she would melt his whole being with sympathy, and he could now have cast off the embrace of the brother, by whose hand fate had closed her soft eyes in that long dream.

The stifling air of the most painful sympathy caused him to look away, and turn round, and fasten on the open Messiah those eyes whose drops he would not show; but the recollection that he was repeating her last reading-pleasure made them fall only hotter and thicker. Suddenly something darkening, which fluttered down before the window like a falling raven, directed his look again to Liana, over whom stood a fully illuminated little cloud, as if it were a risen or descending saintly halo. Immortals seemed to dwell thereupon as on Ossian's clouds, awaiting their sister; and when she at length moved and slowly sank down into the water-house, seemed it not then as if her garment of flesh were passing into the earth, and her peaceful spirit into the cloud?

Here Augusti, as the mother had to follow the returning invalid into the sick-chamber, gave him the hint for departure, which he took willingly; his love contented itself for the present with solitude, and with the hope of another meeting. Young love and young birds need, in the beginning, only to be _warmed_ by _covering_, and not till later to be _nourished_.

But a paraclete or comforter whispered softly in the ear of the youth's heart as they departed: to-morrow thou wilt see her only a few steps from thee in the garden! And that is very easily brought about; he has only, at evening-twilight to-morrow, when the evening-walker makes use of her eye-medicine, to repair to the alley, and from among the leaves look freely up into the magic countenance, and then drink in the whole doctrine of felicity in one paragraph, one passage, breath, moment;--but what a prospect!

The Count begged the Lector not to sit long with the busy Minister. When they found him again, he hardly--behind a pile of public documents--remembered, after considerable (perhaps counterfeited) thought, that they had been there, and deeply regretted that they were going away. Ah, the comforter is whispering all the evening and all night,--To-morrow, Albano!

35. CYCLE.

As the juggling night threw our Albano from one side and vision to the other,--for not the near past but the near future wearies us with rehearsals of our waking acts, with dreams,--how glad he was, in the morning, that his fairest future had not yet gone by. Two very Eulenspiegelish wishes often lodge in man: I often form the wish with my whole heart, that some real joy of mine, e. g. a master-work, a pleasure-journey, &c., might yet at last have an end; and, secondly, the wish above referred to, that one or another pleasure might stay away a little longer.