The Children of the World Part 4

"That is of no consequence, Herr Konig," replied the shoemaker; "it is always an honor as well as a pleasure to work for you and your family, not only on account of the high instep which you all have, but because you are an artist and have an eye for shape. As for the durableness of the shoes, that is not your fault, but the fault of the leather. But wait till your daughter goes to b.a.l.l.s. Good work is of no avail then, Herr Konig; dancing shoes which are not as delicate and as easily broken as poppy-leaves, do the shoemaker no credit."

The little gentleman shook his head thoughtfully.

"My daughter, I fear, will give you little opportunity to earn money in that article," said he, "She has no desire for any of the seemly amus.e.m.e.nts which I would willingly grant her; her mind is filled with her work and her father; she can't be induced to attend to anything else."

"Well, well," said the shoemaker, drawing from his jacket a little silver snuff-box, which he offered the artist, "those things will come as a matter of course. Young ladies always have some peculiarities, you know; they do not forget the mother; but women are women, Herr Konig, and there is no virtue in youth. True, you yourself still wear c.r.a.pe around your hat; in your case constancy may be in the blood. But wait a while. The will, Herr Konig, is master; the perception weak; of how weak it is, we have sometimes little idea."

"You are mistaken," replied the other, fixing his eyes which wore a quiet, thoughtful expression upon the floor. "She has become perfectly cheerful again, and I also, though every day I still miss my dead wife.

G.o.d does not like to see discontented faces, He has made the world too beautiful for that. The c.r.a.pe--yes, I have kept it on my hat. Why should I take it off, and when? It would seem very strange to me, to say to myself on a certain day: From this time things shall no longer be as they were yesterday; I will now remove this token of remembrance.

Should I thereby blot out the memory too? But even if her mother were still alive, I do not think the child would be any different. She has a very peculiar character."

"Be kind enough to permit me to differ from you," said the shoemaker with great positiveness, despite the courteous language he studiously adopted. "Women--true women--have generally no character of their own, but one that belongs in common to all the s.e.x. For the sole object for which they are in the world, is, to use Salvenia's words, only to continue the species, or, as we term it, for propagation. A woman who desires anything else, has something wrong about her; I say this without intending to cast any reflections upon your daughter."

The artist opened his little eyes to their widest extent. "My dear Feyertag, why do you say such strange things?" he said, navely. "Is not a woman as much a creature of the dear G.o.d as we ourselves? formed in his image, and endowed with soul and mind?"

The shoemaker laughed, as if fully conscious of his own superiority.

"Don't take it amiss, Herr Konig," he said, "but that is an exploded opinion. Have you never heard of the great philosopher, Schopenhauer?

He will make you understand it thoroughly; he will prove as plainly as that twice two make four, of what account is the so-called emanc.i.p.ation of women."

"I don't have much time to read," replied the little artist. "But the little you have told me does not render me anxious to become familiar with an author who has thought so slightingly of the n.o.blest and most lovable portion of humanity. I prefer to say with my beloved Schiller, 'Honor to women'!"

"'They spin and weave,'" replied, the shoemaker. "Yes, and they can do it very skillfully, and it is an extremely useful occupation.

But in other things, in the employments of men--this low-statured, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged s.e.x, as Herr Schopenhauer expresses it,--no, Herr Konig, men must not allow them to become too strong. Propagation, nothing more. But _propaganda_, you see, for the liberal and progressive, is our affair. For instance, there is my wife; the best woman in the world! But if I did not now and then show her that I am master, where should I be? I admit that during the last few years, out of pure indolence, I have allowed her to do and say more than was well. But Schopenhauer has brought me to myself. Now, when she mistakes her social position, and wants to emanc.i.p.ate herself too much, I say: 'Hush, Guste. You, too, were once an explosive effect of Nature; but now the noise has died away, and the effect remains.'

Then she scolds about my worthless way of talking, as she calls it, but no longer ventures to say anything, because she has not the least suspicion what I really mean by it, and that it is in Schopenhauer. Ha!

ha! ha!"

He chuckled with delight, and rubbed his broad hands.

"How did you chance upon this mischievous book?" asked the artist.

"Very naturally. In my back building lives a very learned gentleman, a philosopher by profession, and soon to become professor of philosophy.

One day, when he was not at home, the bookbinder's boy came and left in my shop a whole package of freshly bound books, which I was to keep for the Herr Doctor. It was after dinner, when I usually take a little nap.

So, half asleep, I aimlessly took the uppermost book in my hand, and began to read at the place where it opened. Zounds, how my eyes flew open! 'Upon females' was the heading of the chapter. I could not stop till I had read the last lines. I tell you, Herr Konig, old King Solomon, much as he knew about women, and propagation, and the conception of species, might have gone to school to him."

"Is Schopenhauer the author's name? And do you call him a philosopher, because he revives the old commonplaces about the other s.e.x?"

The little artist's eyes flashed as he uttered these words, and he seized his hat as if he were in a hurry to leave the shop.

"He is a philosopher, for the Herr Doctor himself says so; but not merely because of what he has written about women; the Herr Doctor showed me another thick book. He said it treated of will and perception; however, it was too heavy for me. If you would like to read it, he will cheerfully lend it to you."

"Thank you, I have not the slightest desire to make the acquaintance of a gentleman who holds and desires to spread such opinions."

"The Herr Doctor? There you are very much mistaken, Herr Konig. He won't listen to a word about the essay on women, and says there is just as much falsehood as truth in it. He is a bachelor, Herr Konig, and what does a bachelor know about the conception of species? Besides, he never a.s.sociates with women, but devotes himself entirely to his invalid brother. They might as well be in a monastery, Herr Konig; my wife often says that if we were to advertise in the newspapers and offer a reward of a hundred thalers, we could not find such another couple of well-behaved young men in all Berlin."

"Indeed? And learned too, you say?"

"Only the older one, the Herr Doctor. He has not much money, because he is at the university, and you are probably aware the minister of public wors.h.i.+p and instruction wants to starve out the whole university, and then fill all the vacant places with pastors; there is but one opinion about it in the trades union. But our Herr Doctor gives private lessons, and his brother sells some of the little articles he turns; they live on the proceeds always paying punctually the rent, and the household bills for cooking and was.h.i.+ng. Two young men, Herr Konig, to whom immorality is something utterly unknown."

The artist had laid down his hat again, and seemed to be struggling with some resolution.

"My dear Herr Feyertag," he said at last, "Do you know, I think I should like after all to make the acquaintance of your Herr Doctor. If what you say is true, he is the very man for whom I have been looking a long time. My daughter complains that she cannot continue her studies alone. What she knows she learned from her mother. But since the latter died, I have found her services indispensable at home, and I thought her so clever that she could get on by herself if I only bought her books. But it seems that she cannot dispense with regular instruction, and now she is too old and too sensible to content herself with the first instructor that offers, and recently, when she met a certain young lady, a teacher who has given lessons in very aristocratic families, she conversed with her so cleverly that the young woman declared she could teach her nothing. So if your Herr Doctor is really such a phoenix, and a true man besides--"

"If by 'phoenix' you mean insurance against fire, one can never be certain of that in young people, but I'll stake my life on his goodness; everything else you must find out for yourself in case you are really serious about giving your daughter--but that is none of my business. My Regine can read and write, and that is enough to enable her to get along with everything that does not concern propagation.

However, everybody has a right to his own opinion. If that is yours, Herr Konig, you will probably find the Herr Doctor at home now. It is vacation, and most of his private pupils are traveling."

"I suppose," said the artist timidly, as he put on his hat and followed the shoemaker into the entry, "the price for the lessons will not be exorbitant."

"You need have no anxiety on that score," replied the shoemaker, shuttings the door of the shop. "If he were paid as he deserves, he wouldn't need to climb my old back stairs, but could buy the handsomest house on Unter der Linden. Turn to the left here, and then cross the courtyard, Herr Konig, if you please."

CHAPTER VII.

Meantime the brothers had again been left alone.

As soon as the music below ceased, Mohr took his hat. "To envy this happiness is one of my favorite occupations," he growled, twisting his under lip awry. "I pity you for being able to listen to such a thing quietly, without becoming filled with fiendish joy or rage, I tried to express this mood in a somewhat rattling, but I think not wholly meritless composition, which I call my _sinfonia ironica_. When I have a lodging and a tin pan, I'll play it to you, and then read you my new comedy: 'I am I, and rely on myself.'"

"A great many pleasures at once, Heinz," said Edwin.

"You need not fear the length of this _concert spirituel_. Only two bars of the symphony and an act and a half of the comedy are finished.

A man who is but half a man, never brings any work to completion."

"Fortunately, as you know, the half is more than the whole,"

"You shall give me a lecture on that subject very shortly, Philosopher.

Adieu."

He went out to search for lodgings in the neighborhood. His mother, a widow in easy circ.u.mstances, seemed to have provided him with sufficient means to live for some time without work. At the pianist's door he paused, and read on the little porcelain plate: "Christiane Falk, music teacher." Within everything was still. He would gladly have found some pretext to ring and to make her acquaintance; however, none occurred to him, so he deferred it until a more favorable opportunity.

Balder had returned to his work again. He seemed in great haste to complete a dainty little box of olive-wood, which contained all sorts of implements for sewing.

In the meantime Edwin was dressing.

This was usually accomplished in the following manner: first he hung a small mirror, scarcely the width of his hand, on a nail in one of the book shelves, just under Kant's critique of pure reason and Fichte's religion of science, and then while pa.s.sing a comb minus numerous teeth through his hair and beard, gazed less into the little gla.s.s than across at Balder. To-day, however, he did something more; he shortened the hair on his temples and chin with a pair of scissors, and moreover looked somewhat carefully to see whether it was cut evenly on both sides. "I find," said he, "that familiarity with the ballet has demoralized me. I am already beginning to be vain, and have discovered all sorts of defects in my honest face, with which I have hitherto been perfectly satisfied. We should have divided our good mother's beauty between us more equally. But perhaps after all, it is better that the inheritance has remained intact, rather than squandered upon two. Come, give your artistic opinion, my boy, has not the plantation been very much improved by mowing?"

"I should have spared the beard," said Balder. "It was very becoming to you."

"You don't understand, child. It has been much too long for some time, even for a philosopher, and although, as in the times of Julius Caesar, no one must wander about on working days 'without some sign of his occupation,' it is now vacation with me and I want to go out to-day as an ordinary mortal, not as an object to startle women and children.

Come, make up your mind to accompany me. We will take a droschky, stop at the confectioner's, where you must be treated to ice-cream to-day as I treated myself yesterday, and afterwards--"

"To-day, Edwin? To-day--excuse me--I don't feel exactly well--it will be better to choose some other time--"

He bent his glowing face over his work.

Just at this moment some one knocked, and the round, good-natured face of the owner of the house appeared in the doorway, for the little artist had insisted upon his going first. In the half jocose, half respectful manner, which he always adopted toward the brothers, he introduced Herr Konig to them as a cultivated artist, and the father of a daughter already highly educated, but who desired to pursue her education still further. Immediately upon entering, the little gentleman had become absorbed in looking at the copperplate engravings and busts, and, seemingly, had forgotten the cause of his visit. But when the shoemaker paused, and Edwin glanced smilingly at Balder, he recollected himself and modestly told his errand.