Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If there be a good spirit near me, or a guardian angel of mine or of his, or if _thy_ spirit surviveth still thine ashes, oh! my old, _kind_, loving father, so deep in thy grave, then draw near, oh! thou dim and ancient shade, and grant to thy stupid, silly son (still limping about here in this fluttering, ragged s.h.i.+rt of a body) this one, one favour, the first and the last, and enter into Firmian's heart, and (while giving it a good sound shaking) address it as follows: 'Die, Firmian, for my son's sake, though it be but in jest and in appearance only. Throw away your own name, go in his (which was yours before) to Vaduz as Inspector, and give yourself out to be him.

My poor son here (like that _Joujou de Normandie_ whereon he is sticking, which circles round the sun upon strings of sunbeams) would fain go whirling about _upon_ said Joujou himself for a little while longer. Before all you parrots the ring of eternity is still hanging, and you can hop on to it and rock upon it if you will. But he does not see the ring; don't deprive the poor Poll-parrot of the pleasure of hopping about on the perch of this earth till, when he has wound his life's thread some sixty times about its reels, the reel gives a ring and a snap, the thread breaks, and all his fun is over and done!' Oh!

kind spirit of my father, stir up my friend's heart this day, and guide his tongue, that it may not say 'No,' when I ask him, 'Will you do all this.'" Blinded by the evening sun, he felt for Firmian's hand, crying, "Where's your hand, dear friend? and do not say 'No.'"

But Firmian, quite carried away by emotion (for this sudden outburst of Leibgeber's long pent-up excitement was most contagious), speechless, and all in tears, like an evening shade, knelt down before his friend and fell on his breast, and said in a low tone (for he could do no otherwise), "I am ready to die for you a thousand deaths, any death you please: only say what death I can die for you. All I ask is, tell me plainly what you would have me do. I swear to you beforehand that I will do whatever you tell me; I swear it by your dear father's soul. I will gladly give my life for you, and you know I have nothing but that to give." Heinrich said, in a most unusually subdued voice, "Let's get away in among the Bayreuthians. I certainly have an attack of hydrothorax this afternoon, or else a hot mineral spring inside my waistcoat; 'pon my word, any ordinary heart ought to have a swimming-belt on, or a scaphander, in a vapour-bath of this kind." But up at the table under the trees, among the people come to keep the Whitsuntide fair, the great holiday and festival of spring--up there among people all happy and enjoying themselves, emotion was easier to conquer. Here Heinrich quickly unrolled the ground-plans and elevations of his castle in the air, the building grants of his Tower of Babel. To the Count von Vaduz (whose ears and heart opened and expanded to him hungrily) he had given his sacred word of honour that he would return to him as Inspector. But his idea was that his dear coadjutor and subst.i.tute, _c.u.m spe succedendi_, Firmian, should take his place and personate him: Firmian, who was such a tautology of him in mind and body, that both the count, and the theory of distinctive differences itself, would have been puzzled to tell one of them from the other.

Even in the worst of years the Inspectors.h.i.+p brought in an income of 1200 thalers; that is to say, the exact amount of Firmian's whole inheritance (now sealed up with the law's leaden signet); so that when Siebenkaes re-a.s.sumed his old name of Leibgeber, he would regain just what he had lost by changing it. "For," said Leibgeber, "now that I have read your 'Devil's Papers,' I can't endure or swallow the notion of your lying fallow any longer in Kuhschnappel; sitting there in solitude, like a pelican (or an unicorn, or an unknown hermit) in the wilderness. Now, will it take you as long to think about the matter as it takes the Chief Clerk of the Chancellery there to shake the ashes out of his pipe, when I tell you that, though _you_ are a fellow who could fill any and every office in the world splendidly, there's only one calling I can follow--that of a _Grazioso_; for though I _know_ more than most people, I can't put my knowledge to any practical use except satirising, and my language is a parti-coloured _Lingua Franca_, my head a Proteus, and I myself a delightful compilation of the devil and his grandmother. Besides, if I _could_ do anything else, I _wouldn't_. What, am I, in the very flower of my days, to stamp and neigh, like a state draught-horse, a government prisoner in the donjon-keep, the shoeing travis of some miserable office counting-house, with nothing to look at but my saddle and bridle hanging on the stable-wall, and the loveliest Parna.s.suses and Tempe valleys wooing the free feet of the sons of the Muses just outside! In the very years when my milk of life is inclined to throw out a little cream--(and the years when a fellow sours and turns to curds and whey come on so fast)--shall I go and throw the rennet of an appointment into my morning milk? Now, as for _you_, _you_ have a different song to sing altogether; you are half a man of office already, and you are married into the bargain. Ah! it will beat all 'Bremish Contributions to the Pleasures of Wit and Understanding;' it will be a business far beyond every existing comic opera, and every funny novel that ever was written, when I go back to Kuhschnappel with you, and you make your will and depart this life. And then when, after we have paid you the last honours, you jump up again (in a good deal of a hurry) and take yourself off to receive greater honours still; not to enter into the bliss of the departed so much as to become a _bona fide_ live Inspector; not to appear before a tribunal, but to take your seat upon one yourself. Joke upon joke wherever we turn! I can't quite see _all_ the consequences of it yet, or only in a very half-and-half sort of way; the burial club will have to pay your afflicted widow (you can pay them back again when you're in cash). Death will fop off your ring-finger, all swollen with the betrothal ring. Your widow will be able to marry anybody she pleases (yourself if she likes), and so will you."

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

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

"n.o.body ever will," said Heinrich, "for as soon as you have re-a.s.sumed your own canonical name of Leibgeber, and given up 'Firmian Stanislaus,' which was conferred upon me at such a stormy baptismal font (and Heaven grant you may do so!), I shall, under names altogether unheard of--(perhaps, indeed, that I may have the gratification of being able to keep 365 name-days in the course of the year, I shall take every name in the calendar, one after the other)--I shall throw myself off the dry land (under these names or some of them) into the great ocean, and propel myself with my dorsal, ventral, and caudal fins (and any others I may have besides), through the waves and the billows of life towards the thick, muddy sea of death; so that 'twill probably be many a day before we meet again."

He gazed fixedly towards the sun, then sinking in glory beyond Bayreuth; his motionless eyes shone with a moister sheen, and he continued, more slowly, thus: "Firmian, the Almanac says this is St.

Stanislaus' Day; it is your name-day, and mine, and the death-day of that wandering, migratory name, because you will have to give it up after your mock death. I, poor devil as I am, would fain be serious to-day--for the first time this many a long year. Go you home, alone, through the village of Johannes; I shall go by the alley; we'll meet again at the inn. By Heaven! everything is so beautiful here, and so rose-coloured, that one would think the Hermitage was a piece of the sun. Don't be very long, though!"

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

Firmian, alone, with tearful eyes, fronted the gentle sunlight dissolving into varied tints over the face of the green-hued world.

Close beneath the sun-fire the deep gold-mine of an evening cloud was falling in drops upon the hill-tops which lay under it; the wandering s.h.i.+fting gold of the evening sky lay, all transparently, upon the yellow-green buds and red and white hill-tops, whilst a great, grand, immeasurable smoke, as if of an altar, cast a strange, magic reflection--all s.h.i.+fting, distant, translucent hues--athwart the hills.

The hills and the happy earth, reflecting the sun as it sank, seemed to be receiving him in their arms, and taking him into their embrace. But at the moment when the sun dipped wholly beneath the earth, there came (as it were) the angel of a higher light into this gleaming world (which seemed, to Firmian's tearful eyes, to tremble like some flickering fiery meteor of the air); this angel advanced, flas.h.i.+ng like day, into the midst of the night-torch-dance of the living, who, at his coming, turned pale, and halted still. But, as Firmian dried his eyes, the sun set, the earth grew stiller and paler yet, and night, dewy and wintry, came forth from the woods.

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

In a blissful, tranced reverie, Firmian went his way through the blossomy fragrance, among the American flowers which open to the sky of _our_ night, through the closed meadows (chambers of sleep), and under dew-dropping flowers. The moon stood on the pinnacle of the heavenly temple in the midday effulgence which the sun cast up to her from the deeps beneath the earth and her evening-blushes. As Firmian pa.s.sed through the leaf-hidden village of Johannes (where the houses were all scattered about in a great orchard), the evening bells from the distant hamlets were lulling the slumbering spring to sleep with cradle-songs.

aeolian harps, breathed on by zephyrs, seemed to be sending forth their tones from out the evening-red, their melodies flowed softly on into the wide realm of sleep, and there took the form of dreams. Firmian's heart, moved to its very centre, yearned for love--and for very longing he felt impelled to press his flowers into the white hands of a pretty child in Johannes--just that he might _touch_ a human hand.

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

"'Tis not for this earthly land That Friends.h.i.+p weaves her holy band"--

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

"Heinrich! oh believe in immortality. How can we love, if we peris.h.!.+"

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

CHAPTER XIII.

A CLOCK OF HUMAN BEINGS--A COLD SHOULDER--THE VENNER.

When, in my last chapter, I spoke of ladies who were given to brevity of sleep, and awoke six hours before their sisters at the Antipodes, I think I did well not to cram into my twelfth chapter (among the numerous events so tightly packed there) a model of a certain clock, composed of men and women, which I invented a considerable time ago, but to reserve it for this thirteenth chapter, where I shall now introduce it, and set it up. I believe this humanity clock of mine was suggested to me by Linnaeus' flower clock at Upsal, whose wheels were the earth and the sun, and the figures on its dial were flowers, whereof one always awoke and opened later than another. I was living at the time in Scheerau, in the middle of the market-place, and had two rooms. From the _front_ room I was able to see all the market-place and the palace buildings, while my back room looked into the Botanical Gardens. Whoever maybe living in these rooms now is in possession of a delightful, ready-tuned harmony between the flower clock in the garden and the mankind clock in the market-place.

At 3 A.M. the yellow meadow goatsbeard awakes--also brides--and then, too, the stable-boy begins rattling and feeding the horses under the lodger. At 4 (on Sundays) awake the little hawksweed, and ladies who are going to the Holy Communion (_chiming_ clocks these may be called) and the bakers. At 5, kitchen-maids and dairy-maids awake, and b.u.t.tercups; at 6, sowthistles and cooks. By 7, a good many of the wardrobe women of the palace, and the salad in the Botanical Gardens, are awake, as well as several tradeswomen. At 8, all their daughters and the little yellow mouse-ear--all the colleges and the leaves of flowers, piecrust, and law-papers, are open. At 9, the female aristocracy begin to stir, and the marygolds, to say nothing of a number of young ladies from the country, in town on a visit, glance out of their windows. At 10 and 11, the Court ladies, the whole staff of lords of the bedchamber, the green colewort and pippau of the Alps, and the Princesses' reader, arouse themselves from their morning slumber; and (so brightly is the morning sun breaking in through the many-tinted silken curtains) the whole Court curtails a morsel or so of its sleep.

At 12, the Prince; at 1, his consort, and the carnation in her flower-vase--have their eyes open. What gets up at later hours in the afternoon--about 4 o'clock, say--is nothing but the red hawksweed and the night, watchman (a cuckoo clock), and these two are but evening dials, or moon clocks. From the hot eyes of the poor devil who opens them only at 5 (with the jalap), we turn our own away in sorrow; he is a sick man, who has _taken_ some of it (the jalap), and only pa.s.ses from fever-fancies of being griped with hot pincers to genuine, waking spasms.

I could never tell when it was 2 o'clock, because I, and a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, were always asleep at that hour; though I awoke, with the regularity of an accurate repeater, at 3 in the afternoon and at 3 in the morning.

Thus may we human creatures serve as flower clocks to higher intelligences when our petals close upon our last bed, or as sand-gla.s.ses when our sands of life are run so far out that they are turned over into the other world. On such occasions, when seventy of man's years have ended and pa.s.sed away, these higher intelligences may say, "Another hour already! Good G.o.d! how time flies!"

And this digression reminds me that it really _does_ fly! Firmian and Heinrich lived on in great cheerfulness of spirit towards the jocund morning which was so close at hand, though the former could by no means take root upon any chair or room-floor all the forenoon; for, in his mind's eye, the curtain kept always rising upon the _opera buffa e seria_ of his mock death, and displaying its burlesque situations. And at present (as was always the case, indeed) the presence and example of Leibgeber heightened his sense of humour and power of expressing the same. Leibgeber, who had gone through all the stage-business and scene-s.h.i.+fting of the sham death in an exhaustive manner weeks ago (in fancy), was thinking little about it now. The problem occupying him at present was how to extract the wick (that is to say, the bride) out of Rosa's wedding-torch, all painted and moulded as it was. Heinrich was at all times forcible, free, and bold, furious and implacable as regards anything unjust; and his righteous indignation often had much the appearance of vengeance, as here in Rosa's case, and in that of Blaise. Firmian was more kindly; he spared and pardoned, often, indeed, at the (apparent) expense of honour. _He_ could never have plucked Nathalie's epistolary lover out of her bleeding heart with Leibgeber's forceps and knife. His friend, at leaving for Fantaisie that day, had to promise the gentlest of behaviour, and, for a time, silence on the subject of the Royal Prussian Widows' Fund. It would, of course, have made a terrific, bleeding wound in Nathalie's feeling of rect.i.tude had the most distant hint been uttered of such a matter as metallic compensation for a spiritual loss such as that involved in her separation on moral grounds from the immoral Venner. She deserved to conquer (and was well able to do so), with the prospect of her victory reducing her to poverty.

Heinrich did not come back till it was somewhat late, and his face was a little troubled, though it was a happy face too. Rosa was discarded, and Nathalie pained. The English lady was at Ans.p.a.ch with Lady Craven, eating her b.u.t.ter--(for she made b.u.t.ter as well as books). When he had read out to Nathalie all that was written on Rosa's black board and sin-register (which he did gravely, but perhaps louder than was necessary, and with scrupulous truth), she rose up with that grand grace which is a characteristic of enthusiasm of self-sacrifice: "If you are yourself deceived in this as little as you are capable of deceiving, and if I may believe your friend as I do you, I give you my sacred word that I will not allow myself to be persuaded, or constrained, to anything. But the subject of this conversation will be here himself in a few days, and I owe it to him as well as to my own honour, to hear him, as I have given my letters into his hands. Oh! it is hard to have to speak so coldly!" As the moments pa.s.sed, the rose red of her cheek paled to rose-white. She leant it on her hand, and as her eyes grew fuller, and tears dropped at last, she said, strongly and firmly, "Be in no anxiety, I shall keep my word; and then, cost what it may, I will tear myself from my friend, and go back to my poor people in Schraplau. I have lived quite long enough in the great world, though not _too_ long."

Heinrich's unusual seriousness had overpowered her. Her confidence in his truth was immovable, and that (strange reason!) just because he had never seemed to fall in love with her, or to pa.s.s beyond the condition of friends.h.i.+p, and so did not measure her affection by his own. Perhaps she would have been angry with her bridegroom's married attorney (_i. e_. Firmian), had he not had three or four of the best possible excuses; to wit, his general mental resemblance to Leibgeber, and his physiognomical resemblance to him (which his paleness purified and refined at this juncture).

Her yesterday's request to Leibgeber to bring Siebenkaes with him in the evening was now repeated (to the former's joy), though her heart was aching in every corner. But let none take umbrage at her half-mourning for the Venner (now setting and near the horizon), or her erroneous estimate of him; for we all know that women (Heaven bless them!) often think sentiment and integrity, letters and actions, tears and honest warm blood, to be equivalent one to another.

In the afternoon Leibgeber took Siebenkaes to her as a sort of syllogistic figure in support of his argument, or set of _rationes decidendi_ (for the Venner was a collection of _rationes dubitandi_).

Aquiliana received Siebenkaes with a blush, which came and went in an instant; and then with the least dash of _hauteur_ (result of modesty!), yet with all the kindness and good-will which she owed to his interest in her future. She lived in the English lady's rooms. The flowery valley lay without, like a world before its sun. One advantage connected with a rich pleasure-garden of this sort is that a stranger advocate finds that he can attach the floating spider-threads of his talk to the branches of it, until they have been woven into the finished art-work of a glittering web, which can float in the free air.

Firmian could never emulate these clever men of the world, who only need a listener to be able to begin spinning a conversation; who, like the tree-frogs, can cling firmly to anything they chance to hop on to, however smooth, and polished it may be; yea, who can even keep afloat in a s.p.a.ce devoid of air, and all objects whatever (which a tree-frog cannot). A man of Siebenkaes' free and independent soul cannot, however, long remain embarra.s.sed by his unfamiliarity with his surroundings; he must speedily recover his freedom by virtue of his innate superiority to chance, external circ.u.mstances; and his una.s.sumed and una.s.suming simpleness soon amply compensates for his lack of the great world's artificial and a.s.suming simplicity.

Yesterday he had seen this Nathalie in the happy exercise and enjoyment of all her powers, and of nature and friends.h.i.+p, smiling and enchanting, and crowning the delightful evening with an act of brave self-devotion. Alas! how little remained to-day of all these joys, so tender and so bright. In no hour is a lovely face lovelier than at that immediately succeeding the bitter one, when tears for the loss of a heart have pa.s.sed over it; for the sight of the loveliness in its sorrow, during that hour itself, would be too sad to bear. For this beautiful creature, who hid the sacrificial knife deep in her heart, where it had been plunged, and gladly let it smart there, that but the wound's bleeding might be delayed, Siebenkaes would gladly have died--in a way more serious than had been intended--could it have been of any service to her. Is it a thing so strange that the bond between them grew closer and stronger as the sand run down in the hourgla.s.s, when we consider that, swayed by an unwonted three-sided seriousness (for even Leibgeber was overtaken by this feeling), their hearts, at sight of the gala-beauty of the spring, were filled with tender, longing wishes?--that Siebenkaes, with his pale face, worn, and stamped with all the traces and marks and signs of recent, bygone, trouble and pain, shone, this day, with a soft and pleasing sheen, as of evening sunlight, on her sight, all weakened by her tears?--that she thought with pleasure on his (rather singular) merit of having, at all events, embittered some of her faithless suitor's infidelities--and that every note he touched was in the minor mode of his tender nature, because he was seeking to atone for, and cast into shade, the circ.u.mstance that it had fallen to his lot to lay waste at one fell stroke so many of this innocent, unknown creature's hopes and joys--that even his greater share of modest, respectful reserve, became him, and set him off by contrast with his counterpart, the bolder and more outspoken Heinrich?

With all these charms of accidental circ.u.mstance (which win the female world far sooner than charms of a bodily kind), Firmian was endowed in Nathalie's eyes. In _his_ eyes she had attractions greater still, and altogether new to him: her cultivation and acquirements; her manly enthusiasm, her delicate refinement; her (most flattering) way of treating _him_--(none of her s.e.x had ever before glorified him with anything like it, and this particular species of charm plunges many a man who is unused to female companions.h.i.+p, not only into rapture, but into matrimony),--and (two crowning delights) the facts that the whole affair was fortuitous and out of the common, and that Lenette was the exact antipodes of her in each and every respect.

Alas! poor starved, hungering Firmian. There are always a gallows, and a notice-board marked "No thoroughfare," on the banks of the streamlet of _your_ life, even now that it has become a pearl-bearing brook. Your marriage ring must have pinched you a good deal, and felt very tight in a warm, temperature like this, as, indeed _all_ rings feel tight in a warm bath, and loose in a cold one.

But either some naiad of a diabolical turn of mind, or some ocean G.o.d who loved a jest, took always the greatest delight in perturbing and disturbing the sea of Firmian's life, and stirring up the sand at the bottom of it just when its waters were sparkling and glowing enchantingly with phosph.o.r.escent sea creatures, or some electric matter or other, and his s.h.i.+p leaving a long s.h.i.+ning wake behind her in it.

For just as the glory and the beauty of the garden outside were growing moment by moment, and embarra.s.sment vanis.h.i.+ng away with equal rapidity, the painful memory of the late bereavement fading out of remembrance; just when the pianoforte (or, say, the pianissimo fortissimo), and the songs, duets, and trios were being opened and got ready; in fine, just as the honey-cells of their orangery of happiness, their permitted flesh-pots of Egypt, and deep communion cup of love were all ready to their lips, who came with a pop into the room but a certain bluebottle fly on two legs, who had often flown into Firmian's cup of joy before now.

The Venner, Rosa von Meyern, made his appearance on the scene, lovelily attired in saffron silk, to pay his bride his privileged amba.s.sadorial visit.

Never in all his career did this young gentleman arrive otherwise than too soon or too late; just as he was never serious, but either lachrymose or jocular. The three faces were now each a long duodecimo edition of themselves; Leibgeber's was the only one which was not stretched on the wire-drawing press, but it was dyed a fine red by his inborn detestation of fops and maiden-hawks of every kind. Everard had come primed with one idea (taken from s...o...b..rg's 'Homer'), which was, to ask Nathalie, on his entrance, whether she were a G.o.ddess or a mortal (in the manner of Homer's heroes), since _he_ could only pretend to contend with the latter race. But at sight of the masculine pair whom the Devil levelled at his head like a double-barrelled gun, everything inside it turned to cheese and curd, immobile; _twenty_ kisses wouldn't have enabled him to get his great idea a-flow again. It was five days before he got what little there was inside the bones of his head into such a fair way of recovery as to make s.h.i.+ft to deliver himself of this idea to a distant relation of my own (how else should I have known anything about it?) in a tolerable degree of preservation.

At all times nothing so paralysed him in female society as the presence of a man; he would have stormed an entire convent of women sooner than have laid siege to a single couple of novices (to say nothing of a canoness), had but a single wretched man been alongside them.

A standing troupe of players, such as I now see before my pencil, never performed in Fantaisie. Nathalie was lost in amazement (little polite), and in a quiet comparison of this original edition with her epistolary ideal. The Venner, who took for granted that the result of her observations was just the opposite of what it really was, would have been delighted had he had it in his power to be a manifest contradiction, an antipodes to himself. I mean, he would fain have shown himself both cold and angry at finding her in the society of this couple, and also confidential and tender, so that this beggarly pair might be filled with envy and vexation at the sight of his harvest and vintage. And inasmuch as he was quite as greatly (only much more agreeably) struck with, and surprised at her appearance, as she with his, and as he had time enough before him for revenge and punishment, he chose rather to adopt the line of bragging and vaunting with the view of seasoning and blessing the visit of these two lawyer fellows with a good spice of envy. Moreover, he had the advantage of them in possessing a light horse-artillery body, and he could _mobilise_ his army of physical charms quicker than they could. Siebenkaes was thinking of nothing nearer at hand than--his wife. Before Rosa's arrival he had been browsing on the idea of her as on a meadow of bitter herbs, for the rough, chapped bark of the conjugal hand was by no means capable of touching his self-love with the delicate, etherial, gentle, _snail-antennae_ touch of this unmated beauty's eiderdown fingers. But now the idea of Lenette became a pasture of sweet and succulent verdure; for his jealousy of Rosa (domiciled in two different quarters) was less awakened by Lenette's behaviour to him than by Nathalie's relations with him. The grimness of Heinrich's glances increased amain; they wandered up and down over Rosa's summer hare-skin of yellow silk with a jaundiced glare. In an irritable impulse to be doing something or other, he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and got hold of the profile of Herr von Blaise which he had clipped out (as we may remember) on the occasion when he stamped the gla.s.s wig to pieces (and with respect to which profile the only thing which had been distressing him for a twelvemonth past was that it was in his pocket, and not affixed to the gallows, where he could have stuck it with a hairpin the evening he went away). He pulled it out, and tousling it between his fingers, he glided nimbly backwards and forwards between Nathalie and Rosa, murmuring to Siebenkaes (with his eyes fixed on the Venner), "a la silhouette."[64]

Everard's self-love divined these flattering (and involuntary) sacrifices of the self-love of the other two, and he went on firing off at the embarra.s.sed girl (with ever-growing superciliousness, directed to Siebenkaes's address) fragments from the story of his travels, messages from his friends, and questions concerning the arrival of his letters. The brethren, Siebenkaes and Leibgeber, sounded a retreat, but did so like true males; for they were the least bit annoyed with poor, innocent Nathalie, just as though she could have marched up to this sponsus and letter bridegroom of hers the moment he came into the room, with a salutation such as, "Sir, you can never be lord of mine, even were you nothing worse than a scoundrel, idiot, fright, prig, man-milliner," &c. But must we not, all of us (for I don't consider myself an exception), smite upon our bony, sinful b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and confess that we spit fire the moment modest girls refrain from spitting it instantly at those whom we may have nigrified or excommunicated in their presence; that further we insist upon their discarding wicked squires instantaneously, although they may not be in such a hurry to receive them that they should care as little what forced marches and honourable retreats their cottiers and dependents may have to make, as we fief-holders do ourselves; and that we are offended with them when they have an innocent opportunity of being false; even when they do not avail themselves of it? May Heaven improve the cla.s.s of persons of whom I have just been treating.

Firmian and Heinrich roamed for an hour or two about the enchanted valley; it was full of magic flutes, magic zithers, and magic mirrors.