Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 21

On this particular occasion, however, Schalaster drew our couple a little nearer together again. It was a satisfaction to Siebenkaes to find that he had been a little mistaken up to this point, and that it was not only love to Stiefel which had taken her to evening church, but that regard for purity of doctrine had something to do with it as well.

The distinction was fine, it is true; but in time of need one catches at the minutest fragment of comfort; and Siebenkaes was delighted that his wife wasn't _quite_ so deeply in love with the Schulrath as he had been supposing. Let no one hear speak despairingly of the delicate gossamer web which supports us and our happiness. If we _do_ spin and draw it out of _ourselves_, as the spider does hers, yet it bears us pretty firmly up, and, like the spider, we hang safe and sound in the middle of it, while the storm-wind rocks both our web and us uninjured to and fro.

From this day Siebenkaes went straightway back to his only friend in the place, Stiefel, whose little mistake he had forgiven from his heart long long since--half an hour after it happened, I believe. He knew that the sight of him would be a consolation to the exiled evangelist in his Patmos-chamber, and that his wife would find a consolation in it too. Yea, he carried greetings which had never been intrusted to him backwards and forwards between the two.

The little sc.r.a.ps of news of the Schulrath, which he would let drop of an evening, were to Lenette as the young green shoots which the partridge scratches up from beneath the snow. At the same time, I am not concealing the fact that I am very sorry both for him and for her; although I am not such a wretched partisan of either as to withhold my love and my sympathy from two people who are mutually misunderstanding and making war upon each other.

Out of this grey sultry sky, whose electrical machines were being charged fuller and fuller every hour, there broke, at last, a first harsh peal of thunder--Firmian lost his law suit. The Heimlicher was the catskin rubber, the foxtail switch, which charged the Inheritance Chamber, the goldsmith's pitch-cake of Justice, full of pocket-lightning. But the suit was adjudged to be lost on the simple ground that the young notary, Giegold, with whose notarial instrument Siebenkaes had armed himself, was not as yet duly matriculated. There cannot be very many persons unaware that in Saxony no legal instrument is valid unless drawn up by a notary who has been duly matriculated, while, at the same time, doc.u.mentary evidence can be of no greater force in another country than of that which it possessed in the country where it was drawn up. Firmian lost his suit, and his inheritance along with it. However, the latter remained untouched, for, perhaps, nothing can keep a sum of money safer from the attacks of thieves, clients, and lawyers, than the fact of its being the subject of a lawsuit--n.o.body can touch it then. The sum is clearly specified in all the doc.u.ments, and these doc.u.ments would have, themselves, to be got out of the way before the _money_ could be got at. Similarly, the good man of the farm rejoices when the weevil has papered his cornricks all over with white, because then the corn which has not had the heart of it eaten out by the spinner is safe against the ravages of all other corn worms.

A lawsuit is never more easily won than when it is lost--one lodges an appeal. After payment of the costs, ordinary and extraordinary, the law concedes the _beneficium appellationis_ (benefit of appeal to a higher tribunal), although this benefit-farce cannot be of much avail to anybody who has not had certain other benefits conferred upon him beforehand.

Siebenkaes had the right to appeal; he could with ease adduce evidence of his name and wards.h.i.+p through a duly matriculated Leipzig notary.

All he wanted was the worktool--the weapon for the fight, which was also the subject of it--to wit, money. During the ten days which the appeal (f[oe]tus-like) had wherein to come to maturity, he went about sickly and thoughtful. Each of these decimal days exercised upon him one of the persecutions of the early Christians and decimated his hours of happiness. To apply to his Leibgeber, in Bayreuth, for money, the distance was too long and the time too short; for Leibgeber, to judge by his silence, had probably leapt ever many a mountain on the leaping-pole, the climbing-spurs, of his silhouette-clipping. Firmian cast everything to the winds, and went to his old friend, Stiefel, that he might comfort himself and tell all the story. Stiefel fumed at the sight of marshy bottomless paths of the law, and pressed upon Siebenkaes the acceptance of a pair of stilts whereon to traverse them, namely, the money necessary for the appeal. Ah! this to the disconsolate, longing, Schulrath was almost tantamount to another clasp of Lenette's beloved, clinging hand; his honest blood, coagulated by all these days of mere icy cold, thawed once more and began to flow. It was through no cheating of his sense of honour that Firmian, who preferred starving to borrowing, at once accepted Stiefel's money, looking upon each dollar as a little stone wherewith to pave the path of the law, and so pa.s.s over it unbemired. His princ.i.p.al idea was that he would soon be dead, and that, at all events, his helpless widow would have the enjoyment of his inheritance.

He appealed to the Supreme Court and ordered another instrument to be drawn up in Leipzig.

These fresh nail-scratches of fortune, on the one hand, and Stiefel's kindness and money, on the other, laid up a fresh acc.u.mulation of oxygenous, or acidifying, matter in Lenette, and, at the same time, the acid of her ill-humour became (as acids in general do) stronger in a time of frost, and on this subject I shall here communicate the few meteorological observations which I have to make.

They are as follows:--Since the misunderstanding with Stiefel, Lenette was mute the whole day long, recovering from this lingual paralysis only in the presence of strangers. I presume there must exist some physical cause for the phenomenon that a woman is frequently unable to speak except in the presence of strangers, and we should be able to discover the reason of the converse phenomenon, that a mesmerized subject can converse only with the mesmerizer or with persons who are _en rapport_ with him. In St. Kilda everybody coughs when a stranger arrives in the island, and although coughing is not exactly speaking, perhaps, yet it is a preliminary whirring of the wheels of the mechanism of speech. This periodic or intermittent dumbness, which, perhaps, like the non-periodic or continued form of the complaint may be the result of the suppression of (surface) outbreaks, is nothing new to the medical world. Wepfer mentions the case of a paralytic woman who could say nothing except the Lord's Prayer and the Creed; and cases of dumbness are of frequent occurrence in matrimonial life, in which the wife can say nothing to the husband beyond a word or two of the extremest necessity. There was a fever-patient at Wittenberg who couldn't speak a word the whole day long except between 12 and 1 o'clock; and we meet with plenty of poor dumb women who are only in a condition to speak for about a quarter of an hour in the course of the day, or can just manage to get out a word or two in the evening, and are obliged to have recourse to _dumb-bells_ by way of helping out their meaning, using for that purpose plates, keys, and doors.

This dumbness, at last, so worked upon poor Siebenkaes that he caught it himself. He mimicked his wife as a father does his children for their good. His satiric humour often had a good deal the appearance of satiric _ill_-humour; but this was done with the sole view of keeping himself at all times perfectly calm and cool. When chamber-wenches distracted him most utterly as he was in the depths of his auctorial sugar-refinery and beer-brewery, by converting (with Lenette's a.s.sistance) his room into a regular herald's chancellery and orator's tribune, he could always bring his wife, at all events, down from the platform by striking three blows on his desk with his bird-sceptre (this was by virtue of an arrangement which he had come to with her on the subject). Also, on the many occasions when he would find himself sitting over against these talking Cicero-heads, powerless to frame an idea, or to write a line, and regretting the loss (not so much to himself as to the innumerable ma.s.s of persons of the highest condition and intelligence) of the thousands of ideas which were thus abstracted by these adepts in the art of talk--he could give a tremendous thump with his sceptre-ruler, upon the table, such as one gives to a pond to make the frogs cease croaking. What pained him most with regard to this robbery of posterity was the thought that his book would go down to it shorn of its fair and due proportions as a consequence of all this fugitive chatter. It is a beautiful thing that all authors, even those who deny the immortality of their own souls, seldom have anything to say against that of their names. As Cicero declared that he would believe in the second life, even were there none, they cleave to a belief in the second, eternal, life of their names, however their critics may demonstrate the contrary.

Siebenkaes now most distinctly intimated to his wife, that he should not speak any more at all, not even concerning matters of the utmost necessity, and this because he simply could not and would not be distracted or chilled in the fervour of composition, by long angry discussions concerning talking, was.h.i.+ng, or the like, neither be induced to lose his temper with her about such matters. Any given matter of perfect indifference can be spoken of in ten different tones and mistones, and, therefore, with the view of not depriving his wife of whatever enjoyment she might derive from speculating as to the _tones_ in which things were capable of being said, he gave her to understand that for the future he would speak to her only in writing.

I am ready, here, with an explanation of the fullest description as to this proceeding. That grave and earnest person, the bookbinder, was exercised in his mind, all through the ecclesiastical year, by nothing to such an extent as by the conduct of his "Rascal," as he styled his son, a bit of a _mauvais sujet_, who was a better hand at reading a book than at binding one--always clipping the edges askew, or cropping them too closely, or doubling or halving the dimensions of the damp sheets by s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the press too tight. Now these were matters of a sort which his father could by no means endure, and he lost his temper over them to such an extent that he would not _speak_ to this child of the devil and his realm, not so much as a syllable. Such sumptuary laws and golden rules connected with bookmaking, therefore, as he had to communicate to his son he delivered to his wife, in her capacity of postmistress, and she (using her needle by way of rod of office) would then get up in her distant corner of the room and transmit the commands of the father to the son, who would be planing away at no very great distance. The son, who had to deliver all _his_ questions and answers to the postmistress in the same manner, approved of this arrangement most thoroughly; his father's tongue gave much less trouble than before. The father got into the habit of this system and ceased to treat of anything by word of mouth, no matter what. He even got to trying to express his views concerning his son's proceedings by means of looks, darting burning glances at him, like a lover, as he sat opposite to him. An eye full of glances, however (notwithstanding the fact that there are ocular letters, as well as palatals, l.a.b.i.als, and glossals), is at best but a box of confused pearl type. But as, by good fortune, the invention of writing, and the inst.i.tution of the post-office have enabled a man, who is drifting round the North Pole on a slab of ice, to communicate with another who is sitting in a palm-tree amidst parrots in the torrid zone--this father and son (when, thus divided, they sat opposite to one another at the work-table) were provided with a means of sweetening and lightening their separation by help of an epistolary correspondence carried on across the table.

Business letters of the utmost importance were conveyed from one to the other unsealed, and in complete safety, for the mail bags, the mail-packet of this penny-post, consisted of a pair of fingers. The interchange of letters and couriers between these two silent powers took place over roads so smooth, and by such an admirable system of "Poste aux Anes" without interruption and free from all delay, that the father could, without difficulty, receive a reply on a subject of importance from his correspondent within one minute of its despatch (such was the facility of communication), in fact, they were quite as near to one another as if they had been next door neighbours. I would here beg any traveller who may visit Kuhschnappel before I do so to saw off the two corners of the table, of which the one served as _Bureau d'Intelligence_ to the other, put both these bureaux in his pocket and exhibit them to the curious in some great city or company--or to me in Hof.

Siebenkaes partially copied the bookbinder's system. He cut out brief letters of decretal in antic.i.p.ation, to be ready for the occasions when they should be required. If Lenette put an unforeseen question to which there wasn't an answer in his letter-bag, he would write three lines and pa.s.s them across the table. Such notes of hand or orders in council as had to be renewed daily, he ordered the return of in a standing requisition, so as to save paper, and not be obliged to write a fresh order on this subject every day; for he merely pa.s.sed this particular paper back across the table again. But what said Lenette to all this? I shall be better able to answer this question after relating what follows here. There was only one occasion on which he _spoke_ in this deaf and dumb inst.i.tution of a house of his; it was while he was eating salad out of an earthenware-dish, which had poetical as well as pictorial flowers on it by way of ornament. Lifting the salad with his fork, he disclosed to view the little _carmen_ which bordered this dish, and which ran as follows:--

"Peace feeds, but strife Consumes our life."

Whenever he lifted up a forkful of his salad, he was in a position to read one or the other foot of this didactic poem; and he did so aloud.

"Well, and what said Lenette to all this?" we inquired above. Not a word, I answer. She wasn't going to let _his_ sulks and silence diminish _hers_ in the slightest degree, for in the end it seemed clear to her that he was holding his tongue out of sheer ill-temper, and she wasn't going to be outdone by him in that respect. And, in fact, he carried matters further and further every day, continually pa.s.sing new broken tables-of-the-law across the table to her, or carrying them round to her side. I shall not catalogue the whole of them, but merely quote a few specimens, e. g. 'The Forty-eight-pounder Paper' (he gratified himself by continually inventing new t.i.tles for these missives), of which the contents were: "Stop the mouth of that tall sewing creature there, who sees perfectly well how busy I am with my writing, or I shall seize her by that throat with which she's baiting me."

"The 'Official Gazette' paragraph:"--"Let me have a little drop of some of your dirty wash-water; I want to get the ink off these racc.o.o.n paws of mine." "The Pastoral Letter:"--"I want to get a glance or so at 'Epictetus on what Man has to endure,' could I find a moment of some sort of peace; don't disturb me." "The Pin-paper:"--"I happen to be in the middle of a satire, of the hardest and severest nature, on the subject of women; take that screeching bookbinderess down stairs to the hairdresseress, and yell away there as sprightlily as ye have a mind."

"Torture-bench Note," or rather "Folio:"--"I have held out, this forenoon, through well-nigh as much as is possible; I have fought my course through besoms, feather-dusters, women's bonnets, and women's tongues. Is there no hope that, now that evening is falling, I may have a little, brief hour of peace, in which to try to get some slight idea of the sense of these terrible Acts of Parliament before me here?"

n.o.body can convince me that it was any blunting of the stings of these visiting cards of his (which he left upon her so very frequently), that he occasionally translated writing into speech, and when other people were present, jested with them concerning cognate subjects. Thus he said on one occasion to Meerbitzer, the hairdresser, in Lenette's presence, "Monsieur Meerbitzer, it's incredible what my housekeeping costs in the course of the year. Why, that wife of mine, there as she stands, gets through half-a-ton of food or so by herself alone, and"

(when she and the barber both beat their hands together above their heads) "so do I, too." He showed it to Meerbitzer, printed in Schotzer's book, that every one _does_ consume about that quant.i.ty of sustenance in the course of the year; but did anybody in that room fancy such a thing was possible?

Ill-will towards a person is a kind of catalepsy of the mind, and so is sulking; and in this mental catalepsy, as in the bodily, every limb remains immovably fixed in the position which it chanced to be in when the attack came on. Moreover, mental catalepsy has this feature in common with corporeal--that women are more subject to it than men.

Consequently the only effect upon Lenette of her husband's little joke (which _had_ the outward semblance of being a piece of ill temper, although it was in reality only carried on with a view to the complete maintaining of his own calmness and self-control) was to redouble her stiffness and chilliness. Yet how very little she would have minded it had she but seen Stiefel even once in the course of the week, and had not the cares connected with those house expenses of hers (which melted down and swallowed up all the pewter-plattery of the eagle's perch) decomposed and dried up the very last drop of happy warm blood in her wretched heart. Ah! sorrow-laden soul! But, as things were, there was 110 help for her, nor any for him whom she so terribly misunderstood.

Poverty is the only burden which grows heavier in proportion to the number of dear ones who have to help to bear it. Had Firmian been alone, he would scarcely have so much as glanced at the holes and ruts in the streets of life; for destiny lays down little piles of stones for us every thirty steps with which we may fill the holes up. And he had a haven of refuge, a diving-bell, to fly to in the strongest gale that might blow--in the shape of his watch (to say nothing of his glorious philosophy), which he could always turn into cash. But that wife of his, and all her funereal music and Kyrie Eleisons, and a thousand things besides, and Leibgeber's inexplicable silence, and his growing ill-health--the continual immixture of all these impure matters into the breeze of his life converted it into a sultry, unnerving sirocco blast--a wind which creates in a man a dry, hot, sickly thirst, which often makes him put that into his breast which soldiers put into their mouths to cure bodily thirst, namely, cold powder and lead.

On the 11th of February, Firmian sought relief.

On the 11th of February, Euphrosyne's day, 1767, Lenette was born.

She had often mentioned this to him, and oftener yet to her sewing-customers. However, he would have forgotten all about it but for the Superintendent-General Ziethen, who had printed a book in which he reminded him of the 11th of February. The superintendent had given due notice, in this work of his, that on the 11th of February, 1786, a segment of South Germany would be sent down, by an earthquake, into the realms below, like so much corn laid by a summer storm. As a consequence, the Kuhschnapplers would have been lowered, upon the dropped coffin-cords or lowered drawbridges of sinking soil, into h.e.l.l by entire companies at a time, instead of going there as single _envoyes_, as theretofore was the usage. However, nothing came of all this.

On the day before the earthquake, and before Lenette's birthday, Firmian repaired to the lifting-crane--the springboard of his soul--namely, the old height where his Henry had taken his farewell.

The forms of his friend and wife stood, dim and vague, before his soul's sight. He thought upon the circ.u.mstance that since his friend had left him there had been about the same number of ruptures and divisions in his married life as, according to Moreri, took place in the Church from the time of the Apostles down to Luther's days, namely, 124. Labourers, innocent and simple, silent and happy, were smoothing the spring's path. He had pa.s.sed by gardens where they were clearing the moss and the autumn-leaves away from the trees--by beehives and vine-stocks being transplanted, cleaned, pruned--by osiers being trimmed and dressed. The sun shone bright and warm over the land, all rich with buds; and suddenly he was struck by one of these sensations which often come upon imaginative men--and this is why these are somewhat apt to be a little fanciful and visionary--it seemed to him as if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart, but in some warm and tender tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were expanding and breaking away through some c.h.i.n.k in its prison, and melting into a tone of music--a blue aether wave.

"I must and will forgive her, on her birthday," cried his softened heart and soul; "I have little doubt that I have been too hard upon her all this time." He resolved that he would have the Schulrath into the house, and the calico-gown beforehand, and make her a birthday present of the pair, and of a new sewing-cus.h.i.+on. He grasped his watch-chain and pulled out that Elijah's and Faust's mantle, which was to bear him away over all his ills by being converted into cash. He went home with every corner of his heart glowing with suns.h.i.+ne, artfully made his watch stop, and told Lenette he must take it to the watchmaker's to be repaired (and indeed its movements. .h.i.therto had been like those of the planets above us, a forward movement at the beginning of the terrestrial or clock-day, afterwards stationary, and latterly retrograde). In this fas.h.i.+on he concealed his projects from her. He took the watch himself to the market-place and sold it, though he knew very well he would never be able to write with comfort unless it was ticking on his table (like the n.o.bleman mentioned by Locke, who could only dance in one particular room, in which there was an old box standing). Also, in the evening, the redeemed, checked s.h.i.+rt-of-blood, or seedbag of evil weeds, was clandestinely introduced into the house.

Towards evening Firmian went to the Schulrath, and with all the warmth of his eloquent heart told him of his resolve and everything connected with it--the birthday, the return of the calico, his request to _him_ to come and see them again, his own imminent death, and his resignation to everything. Warm breath of life was breathed into Stiefel, long languis.h.i.+ng in absence and love (which, together, had gnawed him into paleness, as lime does the shadows of a fresco), when he heard that on the morrow the beloved voice of his Lenette, longed for during all this weary time (_she_ could hear _his_, by-the-by, in church, of course), would once more stir the chords of his being.

I must here just glance at a defence, for a moment, as well as an accusation. The former relates to my hero, who seems rather to have rumpled his honour's patent of n.o.bility to a greater or less extent, by having made this request to Stiefel; but, then, we must consider that his _intention_ in making it was to do a great kindness to his suffering wife, and a small one to himself. The fact is, that the very strongest and roughest of men cannot hold out in the long run against the everlasting feminine sulking and undermining. For the sheer sake of a little peace and quietness, a man who may have sworn a thousand oaths before marriage that he _would_ have his own way in that condition of life, comes, in the long run, to let his wife have _hers_. The remainder of Siebenkaes' conduct I have no need to defend, since 'tis not possible to do so, but only necessary. The accusation to which I alluded is against my own fellow-labourers, and it is--that they differ so widely in their romances from this Biography and from real life, in describing the ruptures and reconciliations of their characters as being possible, and as actually occurring, in periods of time so brief that one might stand by and time them with a stop-watch in one's hand.

But a man does _not_ break with a person he loves all in an instant; the rendings alternate with little re-bindings with bands of silk and flowers, till at length the long alternation between seeking and shunning ends in complete separation, and it is then, and not till then, that we wretched creatures are at our wretchedest. The same is generally true of the _union_ of souls; for though at times an unseen infinite Arm seems suddenly to press us upon some new heart, yet we have always long _known_ this heart, in the Gallery of the Saints of our longing devotion and often taken the picture down, uncovered, and adored it. It became impossible to Firmian (sitting in the evening in his lonesome chair of anxiety and suspense) to keep all that love of his waiting with any sort of patience for the morrow. The very restraint which was upon him made his love wax warmer; and when his old familiar fear--that he would die before the equinox came round--fell upon him, it terrified him more than it was wont; but not the thought of death. What shook him was the idea of Lenette's difficulties, and how she would ever find the money requisite for the performance of the final trial, the anchor-proof[57] of his humanity. As it chanced, he had plenty of money among his fingers at this very moment. He sprang up and ran that very evening to the manager of the corpse lottery, so that, at all events, his wife should be ent.i.tled to a capital of fifty florins at his death, and be able to cover his body decently over with a little earth. I don't know the exact sum he paid; but I am quite accustomed to embarra.s.sments of this description, which novel-writers, who can invent any sum they please in a case of this sort, have no idea of, but which are exceedingly troublesome to a writer of actual biography, who does not put down anything which he is not in a position to substantiate by doc.u.mentary evidence, and a reference to records.

On the morning of the 11th of February, that is to say on the Sat.u.r.day, Firmian entered his room, feeling very tender-hearted (for every illness and weakness softens our heart--loss of blood, for instance, and trouble), and all the more so because he was looking forward to a kindly, peaceful day. We love much more warmly when we are looking forward to making somebody happy than we do half an hour after, when we have done it. It was as windy this morning as if the gales were holding tournament, or riding at the ring, or as if aeolus were shooting his winds out of air-guns. Hence many people thought either that the earthquake was beginning, or that a few people here and there had hanged themselves for fear of it. Firmian met a pair of eyes in Lenette's face, from which, even at that early hour, there had fallen a warm blood-rain of tears, on this first of her days. She had not in the slightest degree guessed at his tenderness towards her, or at that which he had in his mind. She had had no thought of anything of the kind; her only idea had been, "Ah, me! since my poor father and mother have been dead and gone, there is not a soul that ever remembers I have a birthday." Something or other was evidently pre-occupying her. She looked once or twice, very inquiringly, into his eyes, and seemed to be making up her mind to something; so he put off for a time the outpouring of his full heart, and the unveiling of his twofold birthday-present. At last she came up to him slowly, with the colour in her face, tried in a troubled way to get his hand into hers, and said, with downcast eyes, in which, as yet, there were no tears, "We will be friends again to-day. If you _have_ hurt me, and given me a little pain, what I want is to forgive you from my heart. Do you the same to me." This address rent his warm breast in twain, and at first all he could do was to be dumb, and clasp her in this silence to his o'er-fraught heart, saying, after a time, "Forgive _thou_ me only! for, ah! I love thee far more than thou lovest me." And here, at the thought of bygone days, the heavy tear-drops rose from the depths of his laden heart, and flowed, silent and slow, as the deep streams flow. She gazed at him much astonished, saying, "We are going to be friends, then, are we, to-day? and it is my birthday. But, ah, me! it is a sad, sad birthday, too." It was only at this point that he remembered his birthday-present. He ran and brought it that is to say, the cus.h.i.+on, the calico-dress, and the news that Stiefel was coming in the evening. At this she began to shed tears, and said, "Ah! did you really do all this yesterday? And you remembered that this was my birthday? Oh! it was so kind of you, and I do so thank you for it; particularly--particularly--for the delightful--cus.h.i.+on. I never thought you would remember anything about my wretched birthday at all!"

His manly, beautiful soul, which kept no watch upon its enthusiasm (as women's do), told her everything, including the fact that he had joined the corpse-lottery the day before, so that she might be able to put him under ground at less expense. Her emotion became as strong and as visible as his own. "No, no," she cried at length, "G.o.d will preserve you; but, then, there's _this_ terrible day; who knows if we shall ever see another morning. Tell me, what does Mr. Stiefel think about the earthquake?" "Don't distress yourself on that score," said Firmian; "he says there won't be anything of the kind."

Reluctantly he let her away from his glowing heart. Until he went out into the free air (for writing was utterly impossible) he gazed continually upon her bright, s.h.i.+ning face, whence all the clouds were quite cleared away. He practised upon himself an old trick he had (which _I_ have learnt from him); when he wished to love some dear person very dearly, and forgive him everything, he looked long on his face. For we (that's to say he and I) see in a human face, when it is old, the finger-board, the counting board, of all the bitter pains and sorrows which have pa.s.sed so rudely over it; and when it is young, it is like a bed of flowers on the slope of a volcano, whose next eruption will split it into s.h.i.+vers. Either the future or the past is written on every face--making us gentle and tender, if not sad.

Firmian would have been delighted to have held his new-found, restored Lenette to his heart all the day long; at all events till evening came; but her house-work and other occupations were so many bars' rest in this music, and her lachrymal ducts were sources of appet.i.te, as well as of tears. And she had not the courage to question him concerning the metallic source of his gold-bearing stream, upon whose gentle waves she was floating now. But her husband gladly divulged the secret of the sale of his watch. The actual estate of matrimony was to-day to him what the pre-nuptial period is always--a _cymbale d'amour_--having a sounding-board at each of its faces which doubles, not the strings of the instrument, but the tone of those it has. The entire day was like a piece cut out of the full moon, unclouded by the slightest haze, or rather out of the second world, into which the people of the moon themselves proceed. Lenette, in her morning glow, was like the (so-called) Moss of Violet Stone--the Iolite--which gives out the perfume of a miniature-bed of violets, if you but rub it till it gets a little warm.

At evening finally appeared the Rath, all a-shake with agitation. He looked just the least bit haughty, but when he tried to wish Lenette many happy returns of the day, he could not do it for tears, which were in his throat quite as much as in his eyes. His embarra.s.sment served to conceal hers; but _at length_ the opaque mist cleared away from among them, and they were able to look at one another. And then they were very happy; Firmian forced himself to be so; the other two required no constraining.

The heavy storm-clouds, then, ceased for a time to hang and sweep so low, as they had been doing of late, over their comforted, softened hearts. The boding comet of the future was shorn of its sword, and went sweeping on, far brighter and whiter, into the blue expanse of heaven, pa.s.sing athwart more brilliant constellations. And there came into their evening a brief letter from Leibgeber, of which the joy-bringing lines bedeck and adorn our hero's evening, as well as our next chapter.

Thus did the quick, transient, quivering _Flower-pieces_ of Fantasy mature in the brains of our triple alliance (as in the reader's own) into actual and living flowers of joy--as the fever-patient takes the flowers patterned upon his waving bed-curtain to be real and tangible forms. In truth, this winter night, like one of summer, would hardly quite cool down and die out on their horizon, and when they parted at midnight they said, "We have all had a very happy time."

CHAPTER XI.

LEIBGEBER'S DISQUISITION ON FAME--FIRMIAN'S "EVENING PAPER."

In my last chapter I practised a deception on the reader out of pure goodwill towards him; however, I must let him remain undeceived until he has read the following letter of Leibgeber's:--

"Vaduz February 2, 1786.

"MY FIRMIAN STANISLAUS,

"In May I shall be in Bayreuth, and you must be there too. I have nothing else of any consequence to write to you now--however, this is quite important enough, namely, that I _order_ you to arrive in Bayreuth upon the first day of the month of gladness, because I have something of the most extraordinarily mad and important kind in my head concerning you, and that as sure as there is a heaven above us. My joy and your happiness depend on your making this journey. I would reveal the whole mystery to you in this letter if I were certain that it would fall into no hands but your own. Come! You might travel in company with a certain Kuhschnappler, of the name of Rosa, who is coming to Bayreuth to fetch his bride home. But if (which G.o.d forbid) this Kuhschnappler be that Meyern, of whom you have written to me, and if the said goldfish is about to come swimming here to freeze (rather than to warm) his pretty bride with his dry, wizzened arms (as in Spain they put serpents, something like him, round bottles to cool them), I shall take care, as soon as I get to Bayreuth to give her a very distinct idea of him, and shall maintain that he's ten thousand times better than the Heresiarch Bellarmin, who committed adultery a great deal oftener during his career--two thousand two hundred and thirty-six times, to wit. I have the most anxious and heartfelt longing to behold the Heimlicher von Blaise; were he but a little nearer at hand I should--(seeing that there's always something sticking in that throat of his which he has some difficulty in getting down, such as an inheritance, or somebody else's house and land),--I say, I should give him a good hard thwack every now and then in the small of his back (by way of a cure) and await the outcome--I mean, of the mouthful. I myself have been limping about the world in all directions, with my silhouette scissors, and am now taking a little rest in Vaduz at a studious, bibliothecarian Count's, who really deserves that I should like him ten times better than I do. But, you see, my fondness for _you_ is fully as much as my heart can hold; and (to speak in general terms) the human race, and this green cheese of a world which it keeps on gnawing at, seem to me more and more rotten and stinking every day. I _must_ say to you, '_Fame_ may go to the devil!' I think I shall decidedly dip down, disappear, and get out of the way altogether, almost immediately, run right into the thick of the crowd, and come to the surface every week under a new name, so that the fools shan't know who I am. Ah! there were a few years, once on a time, when I really _did_ wish to be something--if not a great author, at least a ninth elector--to be mitred, at any rate, if not belaurelled--if not (now and then) to be a pro-rector, certainly (and very often) to be a dean. At that period of my life I should have been exceedingly delighted had I suffered the most atrocious tortures from gallstones, because I should have been able to erect (with those eliminated from my system) an altar or temple in my own honour, higher than the pyramid mentioned by Ruysh in his 'Cabinet of Natural Science' as having been constructed of the forty-two gallstones of a certain n.o.ble lady. Siebenkaes, in those days I could have gotten me a beard of wasps (as Wildau used to have one of bees)--a stinging beard of wasps, for nothing else but to become famous thereby. 'I quite admit' (said I, at the period in question) 'that it is not accorded to every son of earth (neither should he expect it), as it was to Saint Romuald (as Bembo mentions in his life of him), that a city shall beat him to death, merely to be enabled to filch his holy body by way of a relic; but he _may_, I think, without being unduly conceited, entertain a desire that a few hairs, if not of his fur-coat (as of Voltaire's, in Paris), yet, at all events, of his head, may have the good luck to be plucked out as a souvenir by people who have a certain opinion of him. (Here I chiefly allude to the reviewers.)'

"At the time in question I thought as above set forth, but _now_ my views are far more enlightened. Fame is a thing altogether unworthy of fame. I was once sitting, on a cold, wet evening, on a boundary-stone, considering myself carefully, and I said, 'Now, _is_ there really anything in the wide world that can be made of you? What is it? Have _you_ any chance of becoming (like the deceased Cornelius Agrippa) Secretary of State for War to the Emperor Maximilian, and Historiographer to the Emperor Charles the Fifth? Will YOU ever hoist yourself up to the position of Syndic and Advocate of the city of Metz, Physician in Ordinary to the d.u.c.h.ess of Anjou, and Professor of Theology in Pavia? Do you find that the Cardinal of Lorraine is as anxious to stand G.o.dfather to your son as he was to Agrippa's? And would it not be ludicrous if _you_ were to give out (and give yourself airs about it) that a Margrave in Italy, and the King of England, the Chancellor Mercurius Galinaria, and Margarita (a Princess of Austria), had all wished to have you in their service in the same year? Wouldn't it be ludicrous, and a lie into the bargain, to say nothing of the utter impossibility of the thing, seeing that all these people exploded into the sleeping-powder of death so many years before _you_ flashed up in the shape of the priming and detonating powder of life! In what well-known work (let me ask you) does Paul Jovius style _you_ a _portentosum ingenium_? What author reckons you among the _clarissima sui saeculi lumina_? If it had been the case that _you_ stood in extraordinary credit with four cardinals and five bishops--with Erasmus, Melancthon, and Capella.n.u.s--wouldn't Schrockh and Schmidt have mentioned it, _en pa.s.sant_, in their "History of the Reformation"? Even supposing that I were actually reposing side by side with Cornelius Agrippa under his great grove of shrubbery of laurels, the same lot would be mine and his; we should both rot away in obscurity beneath the thicket, and it would be centuries before anybody came to lift the branches and take a look at us.'

"It would do me no more good were I to go about the matter more knowingly, and have myself belauded in the 'Universal German Library.'

I might stand for many a long year, with my wreath of bays round my hat in that chill pocket-Pantheon, in my niche amongst the great _literati_ lying and sitting round me on their beds of state--we might all (I say) wait begarlanded there, all alone together in that Temple of Fame of ours for many a long year before a single soul came and opened the door, and looked in at us, or entered and knelt down before me; and our triumphal car would be nothing but a wheelbarrow, on which our temple, with all its riches, should be whirled occasionally to a public auction. Yet I might, perhaps, soar above all that, and make myself immortal, could I but indulge a demi-hope that my immortality would reach the ears of any but those who are themselves as yet in this mortal life. But can it afford me the smallest gratification when I am compelled to perceive that it is exactly to all the most renowned and celebrated of people, over whose faces the laurel is growing, year by year, in their coffins (as the rosemary does over humbler dead), that I can never be anything but an unexplored Africa--particularly to Shem, Ham, and j.a.phet; to Absalom and his father; to both the Catos, the two Anthonys, Nebuchadnezzar, the Seventy Interpreters, and their wives; to the seven wise men of Greece; even to mere fools, such as Taubmann and Eulenspiegel? When a Henry IV., and the four Evangelists, and Bayle (who knows all the rest of the learned), and the charming Ninon (who knows them better still), and Job, the bearer of sorrows--or, at all events, the author of Job--don't know that there ever was such a thing as a Leibgeber on the face of the earth: when I am, and must ever remain, to a whole bye-gone world (_i. e_., six thousand years replete with great and grand men and nations), a mathematical point, an invisible eclipse, a wretched _je ne sais quoi_, I really do not see how posterity (in which there mayn't be so very much after all), or the next six thousand years, can do anything to speak of by way of compensation.

"Besides, I cannot tell what description of glorious heavenly hosts and archangels there are upon other world-b.a.l.l.s, and on the little spheres in the milky way--that paternoster bead-chaplet of world-b.a.l.l.s--seraphs, compared to whom I cannot be looked upon as anything but a sheep. We souls do, it is true, progress to a considerable extent, and ascend to loftier levels. Even here upon earth the oyster-soul develops into a frog-soul, the frog-soul into a cod-fish, the cod-fish into a goose, thence to a sheep, an a.s.s--aye, or even an ape--and ultimately into a Bush Hottentot (for we can suppose nothing higher than that). But a peripatetic climax of this kind begins to cease inflating one with pride when the following reflection occurs to one. Among the various individuals which compose a species of animals (among whom there _must_ certainly occur geniuses, good, sound, common-sense intelligences, and absolute blockheads), we find that we remark and take notice only of the latter, or, at most, of the extremes. No species of animals (considered collectively) is close enough to our retina to admit of our perceiving its delicate middle tints and gradations: and thus must it be with _us_ when some spirit, sitting in heaven, looks at us in the ma.s.s. He is so far away, that he will find some trouble (very vain trouble, too) in drawing a proper distinction between Kant, and his shaving looking-gla.s.ses--the Kantists; between Goethe and his imitators; and will see little or no difference between members of faculty and dunces, professors'

lecture-rooms and lunatic asylums; for little steps are wholly lost to the sight of one who is standing on the uppermost of them.