CHAPTER VIII.

SCRUPLES AS TO PAYMENT OF DEBTS--THE RICH PAUPER'S SUNDAY THRONE-CEREMONIAL--ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS ON THE GRAVE--NEW THISTLE SEEDLINGS OF CONTENTION.

Siebenkæs, a king, and yet a poor's-advocate and member of a wood-economising association, arose next morning a man who could lay forty good florins down upon his table at any hour of the day. The whole of that forenoon he enjoyed a pleasure which possesses, for the virtuous and right-thinking, an especial charm--that of paying debts: firstly, to the Saxon his house-rent, and then to the butchers, bakers, and other nurses of this needy machine, our body, their little duodecimo accounts. For he was like the aristocracy who borrow from the lower classes, not money, but only victuals, just as there are many judges who are bribeable with the latter, but not with the former.

That he does pay his debts is not a circumstance which should lower him in the opinion of anybody who remembers that he is a man of very poor "extraction"--scarcely of any "extraction" at all, in fact. A man of rank is expected (as a thing becoming his position) _not_ to pay his debts, for thanks to the papal indulgences granted to his noble ancestors at the time of the Crusades, he need give his mind no trouble on the subject of liability, and least of all should liabilities of a _pecuniary_ nature cause him a thought. To place a man of a high and delicate sense of honour, a courtier say, under an obligation (_e.g_. to lend him money) is to wound his feelings to a greater or less extent; and a wound of this sort to the feelings is a matter which his refined sensitive nature naturally leads him to endeavour to forgive; he will, therefore, do his utmost to drive the injury thus done him, with all its attendant circumstances, completely out of his mind. Should the person who inflicted this hurt upon his sense of honour remind him of it, he will then, with genuine delicacy of feeling, make as if he were scarcely aware that he had _been_ wounded. Rough young squires, again, and officers on the march _do_ really pay, and moreover, they coin (if the expression may be used) for themselves the money they require, as is the case in Algiers, where every one possesses the privilege of minting. In Malta there is current a leathern coin of the value of eightpence, on which is the legend "Non As, sed Fides." With leather money of a somewhat different description, not circular in shape, but drawn out to some length, more like that of the ancient Spartans (and, indeed, this sort of money usually gets the appellation of dog-whips or riding-whips), the landed gentry and people of village nobility pay their coachmen, Jews, carpenters, and others to whom they owe money--_going on_ paying them, in fact, until they are quite satisfied. Indeed I once stood at table and saw officers, men most tenacious of their honour, take their swords from the wall or from their sides, and therewith, when the boots asked for his money, pay him in the true currency of antiquity (among the brave Spartans, also, weapons were money), so that, in fact, the fellow's jacket got a better brushing than most of the boots for cleaning which he wanted to be paid. And looking at the matter all round, ought it _really_ to be accounted a grave offence in military personages, even of the highest rank, to pay their small debts? So that often, when some wretched tailor asks for metal, they take the iron ell-measure from him, and (while, moreover, applying to _him_ in person the very measure which he applied to their furs) press--not perhaps _into_ his hands, but _on_ to a part of his body on which "contour" lines might be drawn--not mere coins, or bills on approved security, but a metal which Peru with all its wealth does not boast the possession of, the aforesaid iron to wit? In Sumatra the skulls of the enemy are their Louis d'ors and head-pieces, and even _this_ species of currency--the hostile head of the tradesman who has furnished goods--is often taken by the nobler creditor, just by way of satisfying him "in full of all demands." Neither in the Clausular Jurisprudence nor in the most recent Prussian code is it enacted that a creditor is to stipulate in his bill which species of currency he elects to be paid in by his noble debtor, the metallic currency or the castigatory.

On this Thursday morning Siebenkæs had a tough and ticklish argument, or piece of special pleading, to go through on the subject of the half-heart or (half-pig) of the cardinal protector, which his co-king, the hairdresser, pressed the acceptance of upon him, by way of making more sure of duly sharing all the prizes which appertained to the king's shot himself. But his having gained the twenty-five florin prize did not add to the warmth of his arguments, and at last he agreed to the arrangement that the animal should be eaten, pure and clean, like a passover lamb, next Sunday in Siebenkæs's room by the lodgers generally, and by the two rifle kings with their queens in company with Schulrath Stiefel. The flower goddess of the days of man took at this juncture a fingertipful or two of seeds of quickly blooming and quickly fading flowers (such as like the hellebore come into blossom in our December) and sowed them beside the path which Firmian's steps most often trod. Ah, happy man, how soon will these forced blossoms fall from your days. Will not your philosophic Diana-and-bread-fruit tree (which takes the place, in your case, of an oak of lamentation) fare like the cut plants which people put in lime-water in their chambers on St. Andrew's Day, and which, after a hurried outburst of yellowish leaves and feeble dingy flowers, fade and perish for good and all?

Sleep, riches, and health, to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted; it is only during the first few days after the burden of poverty or sickness has been lifted from a man's shoulders, that the upright posture, and the free breath, cause their fullest measure of delight. These days lasted for our Firmian until the Sunday. He built a whole cubic-foot of his Devil rampart (in his 'Selection from the Devil's Papers'), he wrote reviews, he wrote law papers, he kept a careful eye on the maintenance of the household truce (liable to be disturbed by the question of the redemption of the pawned furniture). I shall treat of this matter firstly, before proceeding to give an account of the Platonic banquet of the Sunday. On Firmian's coronation-day he invested twenty-one florins in a watch, with the view of avoiding frittering away his money by driblets; he thought it well to cast an anchor of hope into his watch-pocket. Then, when his wife talked of redeeming the salad-bowl, the herring-dish, and other pledges a matter involving not kisses only but half of his capital--he would say, "I'm not in favour of it, old Sabel would very soon have to carry them off again; however, if you're determined, pray have them out, I shall not interfere." If he had offered any opposition, back they would have had to come; but, inasmuch as he poured the greater portion of his cash into her money bag, and as she marked its daily ebb--and as she could go and redeem the furniture any day--why for that very reason she let it alone. Women are fond of putting off, men of pushing on; with the former, patience most speedily gains us our point; with the latter (ministers of the crown for instance) _im_patience. I here once more remind all German husbands, who have any pledge they do not wish to redeem, how to deal with their fair registers.

Every morning she said, "Ah! we really must send and get back our plates," to which he as regularly antiphonated, "_I_ don't think so; I praise you rather for not doing it." And in this manner he caused his own desire to assume the form of another person's desert. Firmian understood some individual specimens of humanity, but not humanity as a class, in its broad sense; he was embarrassed with every woman at first, while her acquaintance was new, though not so afterwards when he came to know her better; he knew exactly how one _ought_ to talk, walk, and stand, in "society," but he never put this knowledge in practice; he took accurate note of all outward and inward awkwardness of other people, but yet retained all his own; and after treating his acquaintances for years with the airs of a superior, experienced man of the world accustomed to "society," he would suddenly find, on some occasion of his being from home, that, unlike a true man of the world, he had no effect or influence whatever on people to whom he was a stranger; to make a long tale short, he was a man of letters.

Meanwhile, however, before the Sunday came, notwithstanding all the peace-sermons and peace-treaties in his heart, he found that he had plumped, before he knew where he was, right into the thick of a household battle of the frogs and mice once more, which occurred as follows:--It is matter of history, derived from his own statement, that, as Lenette kept on ceaselessly washing her hands and arms, as well as other things by the hundred (although, for the most part, with cold water, it being impossible to have warm water continually ready)--that, I say, he simply asked, in the gentlest tone in the world, the kindly and half-playful question, "Doesn't that cold water give you cold?" She answered "No," in a _sostenuto_ voice. "Perhaps _warm_ water would be more likely to do so, would it?" he continued. Her answer was, "Yes, it would," delivered in a snapping _staccato_. Moralists and psychologists, who may be a good deal surprised at this half-angry answer to a question so innocent, are, contrary to my expectations, far behindhand in their knowledge of psychology in general, and the psychology of this tale in particular. Lenette knew by experience that the advocate, like Socrates, generally opened his battles in the most dulcet tones, as the Spartans commenced theirs to the sound of flutes, and, in fact, continued them in the same strain, that, like the said Spartans, he might retain complete command of himself. She therefore dreaded that, on this occasion also, his flute-text might usher in a declaration of war against the feminine form of government, of which the various provinces of work are divided one from another by washing-waters, as the judicial districts of modern Bavaria are by rivers.

"What key is a husband to play his tune in, I ask you all!" the advocate would often cry with curses, "since, whether he takes it in the major or in the minor, or plays piano or forte, it seems all the same in the end?"

On the present occasion, however, all he was aiming at, his gentleness of demeanour notwithstanding, was a preface to a proper system of educating or training the bodies of children. For after her answer he went on to say, "I am delighted to hear you say so. If we had children, I see you would be continually washing them, and with cold water, too, over their whole bodies, and this would invigorate them and make them strong and hardy, since, as you say, it produces warmth." Her only answer to this was to hold her hands aloft, folded for victory, like the biblical prophet--for, in her eyes, a cold bathing of children was a Herodian blood-bath. Firmian then developed with much greater clearness his invigorating system of upbringing, while more and more strenuously strove his wife against it, with all her feathers ruffled, till by dint of able exposition on both sides of the respective masculine and feminine systems of rearing, they had nearly reached a point where they would have clashed together, like a couple of summer thunderclouds, had not he dispelled these by firing the following shot: "Good heavens! have _we_ any children? Why should we make fools of ourselves in this way about the matter?"

"I was speaking of other people's children," was Lenette's reply.

Consequently, as I said above, war did _not_ break out, but, on the other hand, the morning of the Sabbath of peace brake in, and with it came the guests who were bent upon possessing themselves of (and eating) the warm and divided heart, or pig, of the Babylonish harlot, or Cardinal Protector. It seemed, in fact, as if some happy star of the wise men of the East must be standing in the heavens above this houseful of recipients of out-door relief, for there had, by good luck, been a gale of wind on the previous Friday which had blown down some half of the Government forest and strewn the path to Advent, for the poor, so grandly with branches (and the trees attached) that the entire staff of forest officials could not hinder the ingathering of such a vintage. For many a long year the Morbitzer's house hadn't boasted anything approaching to such a stock of timber, part of it purchased, part adroitly collected.

And if every Sunday is--in a poor man's quarters--in itself and in the nature of things, not only a sun-day, but a moon-and-stars-day into the bargain a day when a poor fellow has his mouthful or two of food, his trifle or two of good clothes, his twelve hours for eating and twelve for lying down, besides the necessary neighbours to talk with--it may be conjectured in what a superlative sort this particular Sunday dawned upon the Morbitzer household, where everybody was as sure of eating his share of the pig in the afternoon as of hearing the sermon in the morning, and with as little to pay for the one as for the other, seeing that it was a settled matter that the lodger of greatest dignity in the establishment had determined that his coronation feast should be celebrated nowhere but there, at the table with mere working men.

Old Sabel was on the spot before the earliest church-bell had begun to toll. The rifle-king's crown-treasury could afford to appoint her hereditary mistress of the kitchen, under Lenette, for a kreuzer or two and a plate or so of victuals; but the queen looked upon her as a superfluity and coadjutor, or auxiliary queen. A king on the chessboard gets two queens whenever a mere ordinary pawn gets moved on to the place of royalty, one of the royal squares (though he has not lost his first consort); and indeed it is just the same when it happens under the canopy of a throne. Lenette, however, would have preferred to have washed, cooked, and served the meats with her own unassisted hands, like a true Homeric or Carlovingian princess. The marksman-monarch himself fled the noisy, dusty throne-scaffold of the day, and in a loose old coat, happy and free, he rambled about the broad green levels of the quiet, blue, latter autumn, checked by no interfering dry stems or straw sheaves standing sentry on the plain, and bursting no thicker barrier-chains than the webs of the spiders. Never do husbands more happily and tranquilly take their walks abroad--out in the open country, or, indeed, up and down in other people's rooms--than when, in their own, the stamping-mills, the sugar and fanning-mills are at work, whirling and roaring, and they promise themselves, at their home-coming, the clean, finished product and outcome of all these mill-wheels. Siebenkæs glanced with a poet's idyllic eye from his quiet meadow into the distant noise-chamber, full of pans, choppers, and besoms, and found true and deep delight in a peaceful contemplation of the whirl of backwards and forwards assiduity going on there, and in picturing to himself and joining in, the pleasant tongue-visions of the hungry guests, till suddenly he grew red and hot. "You're doing a fine thing!" he said, addressing himself; "_I_ could do that, myself, too! But there's the poor wife scrubbing and cooking herself to death at home, and nobody giving her even a thought of thanks." And the least he could do was to vow, on the spot, that however he might find things moved about and "put in order" in the house on his return, he would accept and belaud it all without a word of demur.

And history vouches, to his honour, for the fact that when, on his reaching the house, he found his bookshelves dusted and his inkpot washed white on the outside, and all his belongings "put in order"--(in a _different_ order to the previous one, be it observed),--he at once praised Lenette in the kindest manner, without a shade of irritation, and said she had performed her household processes and accomplished her cleaning and brushing in a manner quite after his heart, for that it was impossible to be _too_ exquisitely neat and spick and span in the eyes of commonplace women, particularly such as composed the infernal triumvirate who were to be present that day (_i. e_. the bookbinder's, the barber's, and the shoemaker's wives); and on that account he had left the intendance-general of the theatre of operations entirely to her--whereas, in the case of scholars, like Stiefel and himself, the room might be turned into a complete English scouring, carding, and brushing apparatus--for men of their sort never glanced down at trifles of that description from their sublime heights of mental contemplation.

But how pleasantly and cheerily did the president of the eating congress put all things in train by this his kindly temper, even before the assembling of the congress; though this appeared most fully after it _had_ assembled. When the thirteen United States, by their thirteen deputies, dine together at a round table to celebrate some arrangement which they have jointly arrived at (and that they do so at least, establishes the fact that when thirteen dine at a table the thirteenth does not necessarily die), it is an easy matter for the thirteen free states in question, paying, as they do, the expenses out of thirteen treasuries, to treat their delegates as liberally as Firmian treated his guests. It is pleasant to look at cattle grazing in the meadows, but not so pleasant to see Nebuchadnezzar conducting himself like one of them; and similarly it is repulsive to see a man of cultivation pasturing with a too eager delight on the stomach's meadow, the dinner-table (though it is not so in the case of the poor). Firmian's guests were all of one mind, even the married couples; for it is a leading characteristic of the lower classes that they enter into a dozen treaties of peace and make as many declarations of war, in the course of the four-and-twenty hours, and particularly that they ennoble each of their meals into a feast of love and reconciliation. Firmian saw in the lower classes a kind of standing troupe of actors playing Shakespeare's comedies, and thousands of times fancied that the dramatist himself was prompting them unseen. He had long coveted the pleasure of having some enjoyment or other of which he could give away some portion to the poor; he envied those rich Britons who pay the score of a beershop full of labourers, or, like Cæsar, give free commons to an entire town. The poor who _have_ houses give to the poor who have not--one lazzarone gives to another--as shell-fish become the habitations of other crustaceans, and earthworms are the habitable universes of lesser worms.

In the evening arrived Peltzstiefel, who was too learned a man to eat swine's flesh, or a measure of salt, among the untaught vulgar. And then Siebenkæs could once more entertain an idea unintelligible to any one but Stiefel. He could lay the sceptre and the tinted glass-ball of the imperial globe upon the table, and in his capacity of king of the feast and of the eagle, say that his long hair served him for a crown, like that of the old Frank kings, his own crown having been knocked down by his landlord's rifle; he could assert that the rule by which only he by whose hands the eagle was brought down became king was clearly imitated from the code of the Fraticelli Berghadi, who could only elect to the papacy a person who had killed a child. That 'twas true he had it not in his power to reign over Kuhschnappel so long by fourteen days as the King of Prussia over the ecclesiastical see of Elten (the latter period being one of _fifteen_ days)--that 'twas true he had a crown and revenues, but the latter were sadly reduced, cut down by one-half, in fact--and that he was far too much like the Great Mogul, who formerly had an income of two hundred and twenty-six millions a year, but now receives only the one hundred and thirteenth part of that sum; however, at his (Siebenkæs's) coronation, though there had been no general liberation of the _wicked_ prisoners, yet _one good_ one had been released, namely, himself; also that, like Peter the Second of Arragon, he had been crowned with nothing worse than bread: finally that, under his ephemeral rule, nobody was beheaded, robbed, or beaten to death; and--which delighted him most of all--the feeling that he was like one of the ancient German princes, who governed, defended, and increased a free people, and was a member of that free people himself, &c. &c.

The throats in this royal chamber grew louder and drier as the evening advanced; the pipes (those chimneys of the mouth) made of the room a heaven of clouds, and of their heads heavens of joy. Outside, the autumn sun brooded, with warm, flaming wings, over the cold, naked earth, as if in haste to hatch the spring. The guests had drawn the quint, (I mean the five prizes of the five senses) out of the ninety numbers, or ninety years of the lottery of human life; the famished eyes were sparkling, and in Firmian's soul the buds of gladness had burst their leaflet envelopes and swelled forth into flower. Deep happiness always leads love by the hand; and Firmian longed to-day, with an unutterable longing, to press his heart, all heavy with bliss, upon Lenette's breast, and there forget all his wants and hers.

These circumstances, in their combination, inspired him with a strange idea. He determined, on this happy day, to go and redeem the pawned silken flower-wreath and plant it in some dark spot out of doors, then take her out there in the evening, or perhaps even in the night, and give her a pleasant little surprise at the sight of it. He slipped out and took his way to the pawnbroker's; but--as all our resolves begin in us as tiny sparks, and end in broad lightning flashes--so, as he went, he improved his original idea (of redeeming the wreath from pawn) into an altogether different one, that of buying real flowers and planting _them_ by way of goal of the nocturnal ramble. There was no difficulty in getting red and white roses from the greenhouse of a gardener of the Prince of Oettingen-Spielberg, who had lately come to the place. He walked round under the upright glass roofs, all behung with blossom, went to the gardener and got what he wanted--only no forget-me-nots, for these, of course, the man had left the meadows to supply. But forget-me-nots were indispensable, to make the loving surprise complete. He therefore took his real autumn flowers to the pawnbroker woman's, in whose hands his silk plants had been deposited, that he might twine the dead, poor, cocoon forget-me-nots among the living roses. What was his astonishment to learn that the pledge had been redeemed and taken away by Mr. von Meyern, and that he had paid a sum of money so considerable that the woman thought she still owed the advocate a debt of thanks. It needed all the strength of a heart fortified by love to keep him from going at once to the Venner with a storm of reproaches for this move of warlike strategy--this pledge-robbery--for he could scarce endure the thought (a mistaken idea, 'tis true, only given rise to by Lenette's silence on the subject of the garland) of his pure love's pretty token in Rosa's beringed and thievish fingers. The brokeress, too, though she was not to blame, would have been severely taken to task had it been any other day, one less full of love and happiness; as it was, however, Firmian cursed in a merely general manner, especially as the woman gave him silk forget-me-nots of somebody else's, when he said he wanted some. When in the street again, he was at variance with himself as to the spot where he should plant his flowers; he wished he knew where to find some fresh-dug bed of fine old mould, of which the dark colour should set off to advantage the red and blue of the flowers. At length he saw a field which is broken into beds at all seasons--in summer and in winter, ay, in the bitterest cold--the churchyard, with its church, hanging like a vineyard on the slope of a hill beyond the town. He slipped in by a back entrance and saw the fresh-raised boundary-hillock which marked the close of an earthly life, rolled, as it were, up to the foot of the triumphal gate, through which a mother, with her newborn child in her arms, had passed away into the brighter world. Upon this earthen bier he laid his flowers down, like a funeral garland, and then went home.

The members of the gladsome company had scarcely missed him; they were floating, like fish benumbed in their element saturated with foreign matter, paralysed with the poison of pleasure; but Stiefel was still in his senses, and was talking with Lenette. The world has already learned from the former portion of this history--the people of the house, too, were well aware--that Firmian was fond of running away from his guests, in order to throw himself back into their society with a greater zest, and that he interrupted his pleasures in order that he might savour them--as Montaigne used to have himself awakened from his sleep that he might thoroughly appreciate what it was--and so Firmian merely said that he had been out.

All the waves, even the most turbulent of them, subsided at last, and there was nothing left in the ebb save those three pearl mussels, our three friends. Firmian gazed with tender eyes upon Lenette's bright ones, for he loved her the more fondly because he had a pleasure in store for her. Stiefel glowed with a love so pure that, without any serious error of logic, he was able to define and classify it to himself as a mere sympathetic rejoicing in her happiness; particularly as his love for the wife placed wings, not fetters, upon his affection for her husband. Indeed the Schulrath's anxiety was directed altogether to the reverse side of the question, his only doubt being whether he had it in him to express his love with adequate force and ardour. Therefore he pressed both their hands many times, and laid them between his own; he said beauty was a thing to which he very rarely paid any attention, but that he _had_ been observant of it that day, because that of Mrs. Siebenkæs had appeared to such great advantage amid all her labours, particularly with all these ordinary women about her, and at _them_ he had not so much as looked. He assured the advocate that he had considered his goodness and kindness to this admirable wife of his as a mark of increased personal friendship for himself; and he asseverated to her that his affection for her, of which he had given some little proof as they came together from Augspurg in the coach, would grow stronger the more she loved his friend, and through that friend, himself.

Into this cup of joy of hers Firmian of course cast no drop of poison relative to (what he _supposed_ to be) the news of the Venner's having made prize of the flowers. He was so happy that day; his little toy crown had so tenderly covered and soothed all the bleeding wounds on that head of his whence he had lifted his crown of thorns just a little way (as Alexander's diadem soothed the bleeding head of Lysimachus), that his only wish was that the night might be as long as a Polar one, since it was just as calm and peaceful, as bright and serene. In moments like these the poison fangs of all our troubles are broken out, and a Paul, like him in Malta of old, has turned all the tongues of the soul's serpents to stone.

When Stiefel rose to go, Firmian did not detain him, but insisted that he should allow them both to go with him, not to their own door only, but to his. They went out. The broad heaven, with the streets of the City of God all lit with the lamps which are suns, drew them on, out beyond the narrow crossways of the town, and into the great spectacle hall of night, where we breathe the blue of heaven, and drink the east breeze. We should conclude and sanctify all our chamber feasts by "going to church" in that cool, vast temple, that great cathedral whose dome is adorned with the sacred picture of the Most Holy, portrayed in a mosaic of stars. They roamed on refreshed and exalted by breezes of the coming spring hastening to blow before their appointed time, those breezes which wipe the snow away from the mountains. All nature gave promise of a mild winter--to lead the poor, who have no fuel, gently through the darkest quarter of the year--it was a season such as none curse except the rich, who can order sleighs but not snow.

The two men carried on a conversation befitting the sublimity of the night; Lenette said nothing. Firmian said, "How near together these miserable oyster banks, the villages, seem to be, and how small they are; when we go from one of these villages to another the journey seems to us about the same in length as a mite's, if it crawled on a map from the name of the one to the name of the other, might appear to it. And to higher spirits our earth-ball may perhaps be a globe for their children, which their tutor turns and explains."

"Yet," said Stiefel, "there may very possibly be worlds even smaller than this earth of ours; and, after all, there _must_ be something in ours since the Lord Christ died for it." At this the warm blood rushed to Lenette's heart. Firmian merely answered, "More Saviours than one have died for this world and mankind, and I am convinced that Christ will one day take many a good man by the hand, and say, '_You_ have suffered under your Pontius Pilate too!' And for that matter many a seeming Pilate is very likely a Messiah, if the truth were known." Lenette's secret dread was that her husband was really an absolute Atheist, or at all events a "philosopher."

He led them by snaky windings and corkscrew paths to the churchyard; but suddenly his eyes grew moist, as one's do when passing through a thick mist, when he thought of the mother's grave with the flowers on it, and on Lenette who gave no sign of ever becoming one. He strove to expel the sadness from his heart by philosophic speeches. He said human beings and watches stop while they are being wound up for a new long day; and that he believed that those dark intervals of sleep and death, which break up and divide our existence into segments, prevent any one particular idea from getting to glare too brightly, and our never-cooling desires from searing us wholly--and oven our ideas from interflowing into confusion--just as the planetary systems are separated by gloomy wastes of space, and the solar systems by yet greater gulfs of darkness. That the human spirit could never take in and contain the endless stream of knowledge which flows throughout eternity, but that it sips it by portions at a time, with intervals between: the eternal day would blind our souls were it not broken into separate days by midsummer nights (which we call, now sleep, now death), framing its noons in a border of mornings and evenings.

Lenette was frightened, and would have liked to run away behind the wall and not go into the churchyard; however, she had to go in. Firmian, holding her closely to him, took a roundabout path to the place where the wreath was. He closed the little clattering metal gates which guarded the pious verses and the brief life-careers. They came to the better-class graves nearest the church, which lay round that fortress like a kind of moat. Here there were nothing but upright monuments standing over the quiet mummies below, while further on were mere trapdoors let down upon recumbent human beings. A bony head, which was sleeping in the open air, Firmian set a-rolling, and--heedless of Lenette's oft-renewed entreaties to him not to make himself "unclean"--he took up in both his hands this last capsule case of a spirit of many dwelling places, and, looking into the empty window-openings of the ruined pleasure-house, said, "They ought to get up into the pulpit inside there at midnight, and put this scalped mask of our Personality down upon the desk in place of the Bible and the hourglass, and preach upon it as a text to the _other_ heads sitting there still packed in their skins. They should have _my_ head, if they liked to skin it after my decease, and hook it up in the church like a herring's, upon a string, by way of angel at the font--so that the silly souls might for once in their lives look _upward_ and then _downward_--for we hang and hover between heaven and the grave. The hazel-nut worm is still in _our_ heads, Herr Schulrath, but it has gone through its transformation and flown out from this one, for there are two holes in it and a kernel of dust."[51]

Lenette was terrified at this godless jesting in such close proximity to ghosts; yet it was but a disguised form of mental exaltation. All at once she whispered, "There's something looking down at us over the top of the charnel house. See, see, it's raising itself higher up." It was only the evening breeze lifting a cloud higher; but this cloud had the semblance of a bier resting on the roof, and a hand was stretched forth from it, while a star, shining close to the cloud's edge, seemed like a white flower laid on the heart of the form which lay upon the bier of cloud.

"It is only a cloud," said Firmian; "come nearer to the house, and then we shall lose sight of it." This furnished him with the best possible pretext for leading her up to the blooming Eden in miniature upon the grave. When they had walked some twenty paces, the bier was hidden by the house. "Dear me," said the Rath, "what may that be in flower there?" "Upon my life," cried Firmian, "white and red roses, and forget-me-nots, wife." She looked tremblingly, doubtingly, inquiringly at this resting-place of a heart, decked with a garland, at this altar with the sacrifice lying beneath it. "Very well then, Firmian," she cried, "I'm sure I can't help it, it is no fault of mine; but _oh_! you _shouldn't_ have done such a thing! oh dear! oh dear! will you _never_ cease tormenting me!" She began to weep, and hid her streaming eyes on Stiefel's arm.

For she, who was so delicately clever in nothing as in touchiness and taking umbrage, supposed this garland was the silken one from her wardrobe, and that her husband knew that Rosa had presented it to her, and had placed the flowers upon this grave of a woman, dead in childbed, in mockery either of her childlessness or of herself. These mutual misunderstandings were to the full as confounding to him as to her; he had to combat _her_ errors, and at the same time ask himself what his _own_ consisted of. It was only now that she told him that Rosa had some time since returned the pawned wreath to her. Upon the green thistle-plant of mistrust of her love, a flower or two now came out; nothing is more painful than when a person whom we love hides something from us for the first time, were it but the merest trifle. It was a great distress and disappointment to Firmian that the pleasant surprise he had prepared should have taken such a bitter turn. There was too much of the artificial about his garland to commence with, but the foul fiend, Chance, had malevolently crisped and twirled it up, with added weeds, into a more unreal and unnatural affair than ever. Let us take care then not to hire Chance into the heart's service.

The Schulrath, at his wits' end, gave vent to his embarrassment in a warm curse or two upon the Venner's head; he tried to establish a peace congress between the husband and wife (who were sunk in silent musing), and strongly urged Lenette to give her hand to her husband and be reconciled to him. But nothing would induce her. Yet, after long hesitation, she agreed to do it, but only on condition that he would first _wash_ his hands. Hers shrunk away in convulsive loathing from touching those which had been in contact with a skull.

The Schulrath took away the battle-flag from them, and delivered a peace-sermon which came warm from his heart. He reminded them what the place was in which they stood, surrounded by human beings all gone to their last account; he bade them think for a moment how near they were to the angels who guard the graves of the just, the very mother (he pointed out) who was mouldering at their feet, with her baby in her arms (and whose eldest son he himself was bringing along in his Latin studies--he was then in Scheller's _principia_), might be said to be admonishing them not to fall out about a flower or two over her quiet grave, but rather to take them away as olive-branches of peace. Lenette's heart drank _his_ theologic holy water with far greater zest than Firmian's pure, philosophic Alp water, and the latter's lofty thoughts of Death shot athwart her soul without the slightest penetration. However, the sacrifice of reconciliation was accomplished and mutual letters of indulgence exchanged. At the same time, a peace like this, brought about by a third party, is always something in the nature of a mere suspension of hostilities. Strangely enough they both awoke in the morning with tears in their eyes, but could not tell whether happy dreams or sad ones had left these drops behind.

FIRST FLOWER PIECE.

THE DEAD CHRIST PROCLAIMS THAT THERE IS NO GOD.

INTRODUCTION.

My aim in writing this fiction must be my excuse for its audacity.

Men, as a class, deny God's existence with about the same small amount of true consideration, conviction, and feeling as that with which most individual men admit it. Even in our regularly established _systems_ of belief we form collections of mere words, game-counters, medallions--just as coin-collectors accumulate cabinetsful of coins--and not till long after our collection is made do we convert the words into sentiments, the coins into enjoyments. We may believe in the immortality of the soul for twenty years long, yet it may be the twenty-first before, in some one supreme moment, we suddenly perceive, to our astonishment, what this belief involves, and how wonderful is the warmth of that naphtha spring.

In a similar manner to this, I myself was suddenly horror-struck at the perception of the poison-power of that vapour which strikes with such suffocating fumes to the heart of him who enters the school of Atheistic doctrine. It would cause me less pain to deny immortality than to deny God's existence. In the former case, what I lose is but a world hidden by clouds; but in the latter, I lose this present world, that is to say, its sun. The whole spiritual universe is shattered and shivered, by the hand of Atheism, into innumerable glittering quicksilver globules of individual personalities, running hither and thither at random, coalescing, and parting asunder without unity, coherence, or consistency. In all this wide universe there is none so utterly solitary and alone as a denier of God. With orphaned heart--a heart which has lost the Great Father--he mourns beside the immeasurable corpse of Nature, a corpse no longer animated or held together by the Great Spirit of the Universe--a corpse which grows in its grave; and by this corpse he mourns until he himself crumbles and falls away from it into nothingness. The wide earth lies before such an one like the great Egyptian sphinx of stone, half-buried in the desert sand; the immeasurable universe has become for him but the cold iron-mask upon an eternity which is without form and void.

I would also fain awaken, with this piece of fiction, some alarm in the hearts of certain masters and teachers (reading, as well as _read_); for, in truth, these men (now that they have come to do their appointed day's work, like so many convicts, in the canal-diggings and in the mine-shaft excavations, of the "critical" schools of philosophy) discuss God's existence as cold-bloodedly and chill-heartedly as though it were a question of the existence of the kraken or the unicorn.

For others, who have not progressed quite so far as this I would further remark, that the belief in immortality may without contradiction, co-exist with the belief in Atheism, for the self-same necessity which, in this life, placed my little shining dew-drop of a personality in a flower-cup and beneath a sun, can certainly do the same in a second life--ay, and could embody me with still greater ease for a second time than for the first.

* * * * *

When, in our childhood, we are told that, at midnight, when our sleep reaches near the soul and darkens our very dreams, the dead arise from theirs, and in the churches ape the religious services of the living, we shudder at death, because of the dead, and in the loneliness of night we turn our eyes in terror from the tall windows of the silent church, and dread to look at their pale shimmer to see whether it be truly the reflection of the moon's beams--or _something else_!

Childhood and its terrors (even more than its pleasures) assume, in our dreams, wings and brightness, shining glowworm-like in the dark night of the soul. Extinguish not these little flickering sparks! Leave us the dim and painful dreams even; they serve to make life's high-lights all the more brilliant. And what will ye give us in exchange for the dreams which raise and bear us up from beneath the roar of the falling cataract back to the peaceful mountain-heights of childhood, where the river of life was flowing as yet in peace, reflecting heaven upon its little surface, on towards the precipices of the future course.

Once on a summer evening I was lying upon a quiet hillside in the sun. I fell asleep, and dreamed that I awoke in a churchyard. The rattle of the wheels of the clock running down as it was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for the sun in the dark and void night sky, for I supposed that some eclipse was hiding it with the moon. And all the graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house kept opening and shutting, moved by invisible hands. Athwart the walls shadows went flitting; but no bodies cast those shadows and there were others, too, moving about out in the open air. Within the open coffins there were none now asleep, except the children. Nothing was in the sky but sultry fog, heavy and grey, ranging there in great clammy folds; and some gigantic shadow closed and closed this fog as in a net, and drew it ever nearer, closer, and hotter. Up overhead I heard the thunder of distant avalanches, and beneath my feet the first footfalls of a boundless earthquake. The church was heaved and shaken to and fro by two terrific discords striving in it, beating in stormy effort to attain harmonious resolution. Now and then a greyish glimmer passed with rapid gleam flittering athwart the windows; but, whenever this glimmer came, the lead and iron of the frames always melted and ran rolling down. The fog's net, and the quaking of the earth, drove me into the temple, past gleaming, glittering basilisks, brooding in poison-nests beside the door. I passed among shadows, strange and unknown to me; but they all bore the impress of the centuries. These shadows stood all grouped about the altar, and their breasts quivered and throbbed--their _breasts_ but not their hearts. There was but one of the dead still lying on his pillow, and he was one who had but just been buried in the church; he lay at peace, his breast without a throb, a happy dream upon his smiling face. But now, as I came in (I, one of the living), his sleep broke, he awoke, and smiled no more; with painful effort he raised his heavy eyelids--and there was no eye beneath--and in his beating breast there was no heart, but a deep wound instead. He raised his hands, folded as it for prayer; but then his arms shot out and came apart from his poor trunk, the folded hands came off and fell away. Upon the dome above there was inscribed the dial of eternity--but figures there were none, and the dial itself was its own gnomon; a great black finger was pointing at it, and the dead strove hard to read the time upon it.

And at this point a lofty, noble form, bearing the impress of eternal sorrow, came sinking down towards our group, and rested on the altar; whereupon all the dead cried out, "Christ! Is there no God?"

He answered, "There is none."

At this the dead quivered and trembled; but now it was not their breasts alone that throbbed; the quivering ran all through the shadows, so that one by one the shudder shook them into nothingness. And Christ spake on, saying, "I have traversed the worlds, I have risen to the suns, with the milky ways I have passed athwart the great waste spaces of the sky; there is no God. And I descended to where the very shadow cast by Being dies out and ends, and I gazed out into the gulf beyond, and cried, 'Father, where art Thou?' But answer came there none, save the eternal storm which rages on, controlled by none; and towards the west, above the chasm, a gleaming rainbow hung, but there was no sun to give it birth, and so it sank and fell by drops into the gulf. And when I looked up to the boundless universe for the Divine eye, behold, it glared at me from out a socket, empty and bottomless. Over the face of chaos brooded Eternity, chewing it for ever, again and yet again. Shriek on, then, discords, shatter the shadows with your shrieking din, for HE IS NOT!"

The pale and colourless shades flickered away to nothingness, as frosty fog dissolves before warm breath, and all grew void. Ah! then the dead children, who had been asleep out in the graves, awoke, and came into the temple, and fell down before the noble form (a sight to rend one's heart), and cried, "Jesus, have we no Father?" He made answer, with streaming tears, "We are orphans all, both I and ye. We have no Father."

Then the discords clashed and clanged more harshly yet; the shivering walls of the temple parted asunder, and the temple and the children sank--the earth and sun sank with them--and the boundless fabric of the universe sank down before us, while high on the summit of immeasurable nature Jesus stood and gazed upon the sinking universe, besprent with thousand suns, and like a mine dug in the face of black eternal night; the suns being miners' lamps, and the milky way the veins of silvery ore.

And as he gazed upon the grinding mass of worlds, the wild torch dance of starry will-o'-the-wisps, and all the coral banks of throbbing hearts--and saw how world by world shook forth its glimmering souls on to the Ocean of Death--then He, sublime, loftiest of finite beings, raised his eyes towards the nothingness and boundless void, saying, "Oh dead, dumb, nothingness! necessity endless and chill! Oh! mad unreasoning Chance--when will ye dash this fabric into atoms, and me too? Chance, knowest thou--thou knowest not--when thou dost march, hurricane-winged, amid the whirling snow of stars, extinguishing sun after sun upon thy onward way, and when the sparkling dew of constellations ceases to gleam, as thou dost pass them by? How every soul in this great corpse-trench of an universe is utterly alone? _I_ am alone--none by me--O Father, Father! where is that boundless breast of thine, that I may rest upon it? Alas! if every soul be its own father and creator, why shall it not be its own destroying angel too? Is this a man still near me? Wretched being! That petty life of thine is but the sigh of nature, or the echo of that sigh. Your wavering cloudy forms are but reflections of rays cast by a concave mirror upon the clouds of dust which shroud your world--dust which is dead men's ashes. Look ye down into the chasm athwart the face of which the ash-clouds float and fly. A mist of worlds rises up from the Ocean of Death; the future is a gathering cloud, the present a falling vapour. Dost thou see and know thy earth?"

Here Christ looked downward, and his eyes grew full of tears, and he spake on, and said, "Alas! I, too, was once of that poor earth; then I was happy, then I still possessed my infinite Father, and I could look up from the hills with joy to the boundless heaven, and I could cry even in the bitterness of death, 'My Father, take thy Son from out this bleeding earthly shell, and lift Him to thy heart.' Alas! too happy dwellers upon earth, ye still believe in Him. Your sun, it may be, is setting at this hour, and amid flowers and brilliance, and with tears ye sink upon your knees, and, lifting up your hands in rapturous joy, ye cry each one aloud up to the open heavens, 'Oh Father, infinite, eternal, hear! Thou knowest _me_ in all my littleness, even as Thou knowest all things, and Thou seest my wounds and sorrows, and Thou wilt receive me after death and soothe and heal them all.' Alas! unhappy souls! For after death these wounds will _not_ be healed. But when the sad and weary lays down his worn and wounded frame upon the earth to sleep towards a fairer brighter morn all truth, goodness and joy,--behold! he awakes amid a howling chaos, in a night endless and everlasting; and no morning dawns, there is no healing hand, no everlasting Father. Oh, mortal, who standest near, if still thou breathest the breath of life, worship and pray to Him, or else thou losest Him for evermore."

And I fell down and peered into the shining mass of worlds, and beheld the coils of the great serpent of eternity all twined about those worlds; these mighty coils began to writhe and rise, and then again they tightened and contracted, folding round the universe twice as closely as before; they wound about all nature in thousandfolds, and crashed the worlds together, and crushed down the boundless temple to a little churchyard chapel. And all grew narrow, and dark, and terrible. And then a great immeasurable bell began to swing in act to toll the last hour of Time, and shatter the fabric of the universe to countless atoms,--when my sleep broke up, and I awoke.

And my soul wept for joy that it could still worship God--my gladness, and my weeping, and my faith--these were my prayer! And as I rose the sun was gleaming low in the west, behind the ripe purple ears of corn, and casting in peace the reflection of his evening blushes over the sky to where the little moon was rising clear and cloudless in the east. And between the heaven and the earth, a gladsome, shortlived world was spreading tiny wings, and, like myself, _living_ in the eternal Father's sight. And from all nature round, on every hand, rose music-tones of peace and joy, a rich, soft, gentle harmony, like the sweet chime of bells at evening pealing far away.

SECOND FLOWER PIECE.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

A sky of glorious and sublime beauty was spread out above this earth; a rainbow stood in the east, like the circle of eternity: a storm, with broken wings, passed thundering, as if weary, along by the lightning conductors, and away through the glowing gate of Eden in the west; the evening sun gazed after the storm with a brightness tender as if it shone through tears, resting its glance upon the great triumphal arch of Nature. All enraptured with the loveliness of the scene, I closed my eyes, and seeing nothing, save the sun shining warm and glowing through my lids, listened to the thunder as it died away in the far distance. And at length the mists of sleep sank down into my soul, and shrouded all the spring in folds of grey; but soon there came luminous bands of brightness piercing through the mist, and by-and-by shone many-tinted lines of beauty, and ere long the dark face of my sleep was painted with the brilliant pictures of the world of dreams.

And then I thought that I was standing in the second world, and all about me a dim green grassy plain, which, in the distance, merged into brighter flowers, and woods of glowing red, and hills so clear that you could see the lodes of gold within them. Beyond these crystal hills there glowed a bright rose dawn of morning, with dewy rainbows arching it all over. All the shining woods were sprent with suns (where earthly forests would have gleamed with drops of dew); while all the flowers were draped with nebulæ, as earthly flowers are hung with gossamer. At times the meadows shook, as waves of motion passed quivering over them--but this was not because the zephyrs bent the grasses in their play--it was that passing souls brushed them with unseen wings. I was invisible in this second world, for there this shell of ours is but a little shroud, a tiny fleck of fog not yet condensed.

And on the brink of this, the second world, reposed the holy Virgin near her Son; and she was looking downward to our earth, there as it floated dwarfed and far beneath, in its pale, feeble spring-time, on the mighty face of the Ocean of Death. And every wave was tossing it at will, and its dim light was nothing but the shadow of a shadow. Then Mary's heart beat with a yearning pulse, when she beheld the old beloved world, and all her soul grew tender, and she said, with brightening glance, "Oh, Son! this heart of mine is full of longing, and mine eyes with tears, for all these my beloved human friends! Raise the earth near us, that I once more may look into the eyes of mine own race, my brothers, and my sisters. Ah! my tears will fall when I behold the living once again."

But Christ replied, "The earth is but a dream of many dreams; and thou must sleep to see these dreams."

And Mary answered, "I will gladly sleep that I may dream of man." And then Christ said, "Say what the dream shall show thee."

"Oh beloved! I would the dream would show me mankind's love. Love such as hearts which meet once more in bliss after long painful parting only know."

And as she spake it, lo! the angel of Death stood close behind her, and with closing eyes she sank upon his bosom, which was cold as polar ice. And then the little earth rose quivering up, but as it neared it paled and narrowed, and grew more dim and small. The clouds about it parted, and the cleft mists gave to view the little night in which it lay, and from a sleeping brook a star or two of the second world were mirrored back. And all the children lay sleeping on the earth, and all were smiling--for they had seen Mary appear to them as they slept, in semblance of a mother. But, in the night, stood one unhappy being, the power of outward grief almost gone from her, except in sighs which tore her breaking heart. Even her very tears had ceased to flow. Oh! gaze no more, sad soul, towards the west, where stands the house of mourning all behung with funeral crape; nor to the east, upon the grave and house of death. For this one day, turn thy sad gaze away from that drear charnel house where the loved corpse is laid, so that the cool night breeze may fan and wake him from his sleep earlier than if he were shut up within the narrow grave! Yet, no! bereaved one, gaze thy fill on thy beloved one while he still is here, and ere he falls to dust--and steep thy heart deep in the eternal woe.

As then an echo in the lone churchyard began to talk in faint and murmuring tones, repeating the notes of the low-voiced funeral hymn that rose within the house of mourning; and this after-song, floating half-heard in air--as though the dead were chanting low--tore all her heart in twain; and then her tears found vent and flowed anew, and wild with sorrow she raised her voice and cried, "For ever silent! oh my love, my love! Callest thou me once more? oh, speak again--but once--only this once, once more, to me whom thou hast left for ever! Ah, no! nothing but silence; no sound except the echo stirring among the graves. All the poor dead lie deaf beneath, and not a tone comes from the broken heart."

But when the mourning hymn ceased of a sudden, and the dying echo from the graves sung faintly on alone, a tremor seized her, and her very life shook in the balance; for the echo came nearer and nearer, and from out the night one of the dead came close. And he stretched forth his pale and shadowy hand and took her own, saying, "My darling, why is it that you weep? Where have we been so long? for I have been dreaming that I had lost you!" But they had not lost each other. From Mary's closed lids there fell some happy tears, and ere her son could wipe those tears away, the earth had sunk back to its place again--and on its face this happy pair, restored to one another, and in bliss.

Then all at once there rose a spark of fire up from the earth, and presently a soul hovered all trembling near the second world, as if in doubt whether to enter there. And Christ a second time raised up the earth ball, and the bodily frame from whence this soul had winged its way was lying still on earth, marked with the scars and wounds of a long life. Beside this fallen leafage of the soul a grey old man was standing, and, speaking to the corpse, he said, "I am as old as thou; why must my death be after thine, oh kind and faithful wife? Morning by morning, evening by evening, now, what can I do but think how deep thy grave, how far thy form has crumbled on its course to undistinguished dust, till my time comes to lie and crumble with thee side by side! I am alone! And _what_ a loneliness is mine! For nothing hears me now. _She_ cannot hear! Well! well! To-morrow I shall gaze with such a woe upon her faithful hands and her grey hairs that my poor broken life must snap and end. Oh, thou All-merciful! end it to-day; spare me that last great sorrow."

Why should it be that, even in old age, when man has grown so weary and oppressed, and has descended to the lowest and last of all the steps that lead him downward to his grave, the spectre, Sorrow, sits so heavy upon him, bowing his head (where every bygone year has left its special thorns) to earth with a new despair?

But the Lord Christ sent not the angel of death with the hand of ice; for he himself looked on the bereaved old man, standing so near him now, with such a glance of glowing solar warmth that the ripe fruit broke from the tree. Like sudden flame his soul burst upwards from his riven heart, and hovering above the second world rejoined that other soul it loved so well; there knit together in silent close embrace, like those of old, they trembled downward into Elysium, where no embrace finds end. And Mary stretched, all love, her hands towards them, and all joy and rapture from her dream, she cried, "Ah, happy pair, ye are together now for evermore."

But now there rose a pillar of red vapour up on high above the hapless earth, and clung there hiding with its dun folds a battle-field's loud roar. At length the smoke parted asunder, and two bleeding men were seen lying enlocked in each other's bleeding arms. They were two grand and glorious friends, and they had sacrificed all to each other, ay! and their very selves,--but not the Fatherland. "Lay thy wounds upon mine, beloved friend. The past lies all behind us now, we can be friends again; thou hast sacrificed me to the Fatherland, as I have thee. Give me thy heart again, ere it bleeds quite away. Alas! we can only die together now." And each gave to his friend his pierced and wounded heart. But these glorious friends beamed with a lustre such that Death shrank back, and the great berg of ice, wherewith he crushes man, melted away at touching their warm hearts. And the earth _kept_ those two, who rose above her level like two lofty mountains, dowering her with streams, with healing virtues, and with lofty views, she giving only _clouds_ to them in return.

Mary in her dream here glanced and bent her head towards her son, for truly he alone can read, support, and succour hearts like these.

Why does she smile now, like some happy mother? Is it because the earth she loves so well, still rising nearer, seems to hover close above the border of the second world, sweet with the flowers of spring, while nightingales lie brooding, with those burning hearts of theirs pressed on the grasses and the meadow blooms,--the stormy skies all brightening into rainbows? Is it because the earth, never to be forgotten of her heart, now shows so happy and so gay bedecked in its spring dress, radiant in all its flowers, the joy hymn bursting from all its singers' throats? No, not for this alone; that happy smile breaks over her sleeping face because she sees a mother and her child. For this must be a mother who bends down and holds her arms wide open, and calls in sweet enraptured tones, "Come, darling child, come to my heart again." This is her child, we see and know, standing all innocence, within the ringing temple of the spring, by his good genius who teaches him--and now goes running up to that smiling form--thus early blest, pressed to that heart overflowing with a mother's love, scarce understanding the blissful words she speaks. "Oh, dearest child, how thou delightest me. Art thou happy too? Thou lovest me! Oh, look at me, my own, and smile for evermore."

But now the very blissfulness of her dream woke Mary up; and with a tender tremor she fell upon her own son's heart, saying with tears, "None, save a mother, _knows_ what it is to love." And as she spoke the earth sank to its place (where its own æther flowed around its orb), and with it that glad mother with her arms about her child.

And all this bliss bursting upon my heart dissolved my dream. And I awoke--but nothing had truly changed or passed away; for the mother of my dream still clasped her child close to her heart here on earth's face; she reads my dream, and, for its truth, forgives, perchance, the dreamer who tells his tale.