Part 18

They passed out of the leafy mausoleum, and sat down on an overturned stalactite. At times, during the conversation, a strange harmonica-tone fell from leaf to leaf, and, at a great distance, the four rivers of Paradise seemed to go sounding away under a zephyr that trembled with it.

The father began: "Flamin is Clotilda's brother, and the Prince's son."--

Only such a lightning-flash of thought could now have penetrated into Victor's already dazzled soul; a new world now started up within him, and snatched him away from the great one before his senses.--

"Furthermore," continued Horion, "January's three other children still live in England,--only the fourth, on the Seven Islands, is invisible." Victor comprehended nothing; his Lordship rent away all veils from the past, and introduced him to a new outlook into the life immediately before him, and into that which had flown away. I shall, in the sequel, communicate all his Lordship's disclosures and secrets to the reader; at present I will first relate the leave-taking of father and son.

While his Lordship accompanied his son into the dusky, subterranean passages of former times, and told him all that he concealed from the world, tears started from Victor's eyes at many a trifle which could not deserve any; but the stream of these soft eyes,--it was not the narrative, but the returning contemplation of his unhappy father and the neighborhood of the buried and mouldering fair form and of the funereal marble, that wrung it out of the incessantly weeping heart.--At last all tones on the island ceased,--the black gate seemed to shut to,--all was still,--his Lordship came to an end with his revelations, and said, "Fulfil thy purpose of going to-day to Maienthal, and be cautious and happy!"--But although he took his leave with that refined reserve which in his rank guides and governs the hands and arms of even parents and children, still Victor pressed his childish bosom, so big with sighs and emotions, to his father's, with such an intensity as if he would fain crush in two his impoverished heart for the sake of the tears which he was compelled to let rise to sight ever hotter and larger. Ah, the forsaken one! When the bridge which clove asunder the father's and the son's days had risen up, Victor went over it alone, staggering and speechless; and when it had sunk into the water again, and the father had disappeared into the island, pity weighed him down to the ground; and when he had drawn all his tears, like arrows, out of his suffering heart, slowly and dreamily he quitted the still region of riddles and sorrows, and the dark funeral garden of a dead mother and a gloomy father, and his whole agitated soul cried incessantly, "Ah, good father! hope at least, and come back again, and forsake me not!"--

And now all that in the foregoing part of the story has created obscurities, all that his Lordship exposed to his son, we will explain to ourselves also. It will still be remembered that, at the time when he set out for France to fetch away the Prince's children,--the so-called Welshman, Brazilian, and Asturian, and the _Monsieur_,--the dark intelligence of their abduction came to hand. This abduction, however, he had (as he now confessed) himself arranged,--only the disappearance of the _Monsieur_ on the Seven Islands had occurred without his knowledge, and he could therefore with his untruth mix some truth, as mouth-glue. These three children he caused secretly to be taken to England, and educated at Eton for scholars, and in London for civilians,[153] in order to give them back to their father as blood-related assistants of his tottering administration. Hence he had helped the so-called Infante (Flamin) become an administrative councillor. So soon as he once gets the whole infant colony together, he means to surprise and bless the father with the delightful apparition. The (at present) invisible son of the Chaplain, who before the embarkation took the small-pox and blindness, he therefore keeps in the dark, because otherwise it would be too easily guessed to whom Flamin properly belonged.

Victor asked him how he would convince the Prince of a relationship to four or five strangers. "By my word," was Horion's first reply; then he subjoined the remaining evidences,--in Flamin's case, the testimony of his mother (the niece), who would come with him; in the case of the others; their resemblance to their pictures, which he still possessed, and finally the maternal mark of a Stettin apple.

Victor had already often heard from the Parson's wife that all January's sons had a certain mother's or father's mark on the left shoulder-blade, which looked like nothing, except in autumn, when the Stettins ripen; then it also grew red, and resembled the original. The reader himself must remember, in the annals of the curious and learned societies, whole fruit-basketfuls of cherries, whose red pencilling was only faint on children, and heightened in redness not until the ripening of the prototypes on the twigs. If I could believe a fellow-bather of mine, I myself should have such a Stettin fruit-piece hanging on my shoulder; the thing is not probable nor important; meanwhile next autumn,--for I have proposed it to myself several autumns, but now Knef, through his dog, reminds me of it,--so soon as the Stettins mature, I might, to be sure, take a looking-glass and examine myself behind.--And on the same ground this Stettin festoon puts off the return of his Lordship, at least the transfer and recognition of the children, till the autumnal season of its reddening.--

I make no scruple of communicating here a satirical note from my correspondent. "Make believe," he writes, "in regard to this intelligence, as if you did it at my behest, and, when you have once related his Lordship's _exposé_ and revelation, very quietly relate it over to your reader a second time; so that he may not forget, or get it confused. One cannot cheat readers enough, and a clever author will be fond of leading them into marten-traps, wolf-pits, and deer-nets." I confess, for such tricks I always had a poor talent; and, in fact, will it not be more creditable, both to me and to the reader, if he fixes it at once in his mind, at first hearing, that Flamin is January's natural and Le Baut's assumed son,--that the Parson's is blind, and not yet apparent,--that three or four other children of January's, from the Gallic seaboard towns, are still to follow;--more creditable, I say, than if I should now have to chew it over for him a second time, (in fact, it would be a third time,) that Flamin is January's natural and Le Baut's assumed son,--that the Parson's is blind, and not yet apparent,--and that three or four other children of January's, from the Gallic seaboard towns, are still to follow?

The reason why his Lordship required of his son the oath of silence towards Flamin was, that the latter, by his native honesty, kept all secrets, but in a heat of passion betrayed all; because in such a case he would make his birth tell, merely for the sake of backing himself in a quarrel with an adversary; because he might the very next day, on account of this revelation, become, instead of a fencing-master with the sword of Themis, a fencing-scholar with the war-blade; and because, in fact, a secret, like love, fares still better between two partners than among three. His Lordship thought, too, that out of a man to whom you gave money in order that he might become something, more would be made than out of one who should be something because he had money, and who looked upon the coins as his hereditary arms, and not as the prize-medals laid out for his future redemption of them.

After all these developments, his Lordship made to our Victor still one more, and a weighty one, upon which he was always to look back on the icy career of his future court-life as to a warning-tablet.

When his Lordship was struck blind before the house that held the ashes of his beloved, his whole correspondence with England, with the niece and with the tutors of the princely children, was embarrassed, or at least changed. He was obliged to have the letters received by him read to him by a friend whom he could trust: but he could trust no one. Only one female friend he found out who deserved the distinguished preference of his confidence, and that was none else than Clotilda. He who did not, like a youth, squander his secrets, could nevertheless venture to put Clotilda in possession of his greatest, and to make her book-keeper and reader to him of the letters of her mother, the so-called niece. In fact, he held women's power of keeping a secret to be greater than ours,--at least in weighty matters and in the concerns of men whom they love.--But just hear what the Devil did last winter: to me it is memorable.

His Lordship received a letter from Flamin's mother, in which she renewed her old entreaties for a speedier promotion of the beloved child, and her inquiries after his fortunes at the Parsonage. Luckily just then Clotilda was making a visit at St. Luna, and saved him the journey to Maienthal. He visited the Chamberlain, to hear the letter from the mouth of his reader. He had great difficulty in securing in Clotilda's chamber an hour free from eavesdroppers. When he at last got it, and Clotilda began to read to him the letter, the latter was called away from the reading by her step-mother. He hears her immediately come back again, read the letter over in a sort of darkly murmuring tone, and say softly that she was going away again, but would come back in a moment. After some minutes Clotilda appears, and when his Lordship asks why she went out the second time, she denies a second leaving,--his Lordship insists,--she likewise persists,--finally Clotilda falls upon the bitter conjecture whether Matthieu may not have been there, and with his theatrical art and throat, which contained all human voices, himself have mocked and travestied her, in order under her credentials to read the important letter. Ah, there was too much in favor of the conjecture and too little against it! To be sure Matthieu could not now undertake upon Flamin, whose academic career had just expired, the October-test of the shoulder-device; but he stuck (so it afterward seemed to Clotilda and his Lordship) with his green-frog-feet to that good soul, and, under the cloak of love for Agatha and for his friend, hung out his threads, let the wind swing and stretch them across between the princely palace and the Parsonage-house,--kept on spinning one after another, until at last his father, the minister Schleunes, should have woven the right web for the entangling of the prey.... I confess, this conjecture throws light for me on a thousand things.--

Victor was even more astounded than we are, and proposed to his Lordship whether he might not, without injury to his oath, reveal to Clotilda his induction into these mysteries, as he had two reasons for it: first, her delicacy would be spared embarrassment at the appearance which her sisterly love must otherwise, in her opinion, have in his eyes;[154] secondly, one keeps a secret better, if only _one_ more person helps him hold his tongue about it, as is well known from the case of Midas's barber and the reeds; the third reason was, that he had several reasons. His Lordship naturally did not refuse.

For the rest, he introduced his Victor with no pedantic rules of march to the ice-course and tilt-yard of the court. He merely advised him neither intentionally to seek nor to shun any one, particularly the house of Schleunes,--to unbridle his friend Flamin, who was in Matthieu's leading-strings, and to guide him, instead of by the bit, rather with a friendly hand,--and himself to covet the rank of a doctor, and nothing more. He said, rules before experience were like geometry before the operation for the cataract. Even after the harvest of experience Gratian's _homme de cour_ and Rochefoucauld's Maxims were not so good as the memoirs and history of courts, i. e. the experiences of others. Finally he appealed to his own example, and said, it was only within a few years that he had understood the following rules of _his_ father's.

The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, is quiet.--Women have more _flow_, and fewer _overflows_, of emotion than we.--There is nothing one hates so much in another as a _new_ fault, which he does not show till after some years.--One commits the most follies among people who are of no account.--It is the most common and pernicious delusion, that one always takes one's self to be the only one who remarks certain things.--Women and soft-hearted people are timid only in their own dangers, and courageous in those of others, where they have to save them.--Trust no one (and though it were a saint) who in the smallest trifle leaves his honor in the lurch; and a woman of that kind still less.--Most persons confound their vanity with their sense of honor, and allege wounds inflicted on the one as wounds inflicted on the other, and the reverse.--What we undertake from humanity, we should always accomplish, if we mixed in no selfishness with our motive.--The warmth of a man is by nothing more easily misunderstood than by the warmth of a young man.

The last observation, which perhaps had a nearer reference, he had made while he was already on the shore of the island in the attitude of leave-taking, which he did with that considerate courtesy which in his rank guides the hands and arms of even parents and children.[155]

THIRD INTERCALARY DAY.

Meteorological Observations upon Man.

When, in the former chapter, I wrote down his Lordship's pithy sayings, I found that some came into my own head, which might be serviceable for the Intercalary Day. I have never made one observation alone, but always twenty, thirty, in succession, and this very first one is a proof of it!

*

When any one remains modest, not after praise, but after censure, then he is really so.

*

The talk of the people, and still more the letters of maidens, have a peculiar euphony, arising from a constant interchange of long and short syllables (Trochees or Iambuses).

*

The two things which a maiden most easily forgets are, first, how she looks (hence mirrors were invented); and, secondly, wherein the pronoun _that_ differs from the conjunction _that_. I fear, however, that they will from to-day forward observe the distinction, merely for the sake of upsetting my assertion. And _then_ one of my two touchstones is lost[156] with which I have hitherto tested learned ladies; the second, which I retain, is the left thumb-nail, which the penknife has sometimes notched full of red marks, but seldom, however, because they drive the quill more easily than they make the pen.

*

One who has received many benefits ceases to _count_, and begins to _weigh_ them, as if they were votes.

*

The transporting one's self into good characters does more harm to a poet or player, who retains his own, than entering into bad ones. A clergyman who, besides, is free to take only the first of these steps, is more exposed to moral _atony_[157] than the maker of verses and parts, who is able to make up again for a holy part by an unholy one.

*

Passion makes the best observations and the wretchedest conclusions. It is a telescope whose field is so much the brighter, as it is narrower.

*

Men require of a new Prince, Bishop, Domestic Tutor, Nursery Tutor, Capon-Stuffer, Town-Musician, or Town-Recorder _only in the first week_ very special merits which were wanting in his predecessor; for in the second they have forgotten what they required and what they missed.

*

Such sentences please women most and stay by them longest.

*

Therefore, by way of reward, I will manufacture more than one upon themselves.--They regard others only as younger, not as fairer, than themselves.

*

They are even ten times more artful and false towards each other than towards us; but we are almost more honest to each other than to them.

*

They look to it only that one _does_ justify himself with them, no matter _how_.

*

They forgive a loved man more stains than we do a loved woman. Hence the romance-writers let the heroes of their quill guzzle, storm, duel, and stay overnight anywhere and everywhere, without the least prejudice to the hero.--The heroine, on the contrary, must sit at home by her mother and be a little angel.

*

On the whole, they are so delicate, so mild, so sympathetic, so refined, so loving and love-thirsty, that I cannot get it into my head why it is that they cannot really like each other, unless it is for some such reason as this, that they are too courteous to each other to be formally reconciled or formally at variance with each other. You dear ones! you sometimes love a man because he has a friend and is one. O how beautifully would a friend of your own sex _fit_[158] you!

*

One learns taciturnity best among people who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn.

*

If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge. An amended and purified soul is darkened by the least moral poison, as certain precious stones are by every other, and now after the amendment one observes for the first time how many impurities still lurk in all corners.

*

I will close with some rules for improvement. Never, when the bosom has to fear that thorn in the side, anger, eloquently represent to any one his faults; for in the very act of convincing him of his guilt thou persuadest thyself of it, and so becomest exasperated. Picture to thyself every morning the possible situations and passions into which during the day thou mayst fall; then thou wilt deport thyself better, for one seldom behaves badly, in a repeated case, the second time.--Is thy friend angry with thee, then provide him an opportunity of showing thee a great favor. Over that his heart must needs melt, and he will love thee again.--No resolves are great save those which one has more than once to execute. Hence _forbearing_ is harder than _undertaking_; for the former has to be kept up longer, and the latter is also linked with the sense of a double expression of power, a psychological and a moral.--Only despair not at a single failing; and let thy whole repentance be--a nobler action.--Only make thyself (by stoicism, or in ally way thou canst) _tranquil_, then wilt thou have little trouble in making thyself _virtuous_ also.--Begin the culture of thy heart, not with the rearing of noble motives, but with the extirpation of bad ones. When the weeds are once withered or uprooted, then will the nobler flowerage spontaneously and vigorously spring up.--The virtuous heart, like the body, grows sound and strong more by _work_ than by good _food_.

Therefore I can stop.

13. DOG-POST-DAY.

Concerning his Lordship's Character.--An Evening of Eden.--Maienthal.--The Mountain and Emanuel.

In regard to his Lordship I have three words to say, that is, three opinions to state.

The first is wholly improbable; it is, that, like all men of the world and of business, he regards mankind as an apparatus for experiments, as so much hunting-gear, war-material, knitting-work: such men look upon heaven only as the key-board to earth, and the soul as orderly-sergeant of the body; they carry on wars, not for the sake of winning crowns of oak-leaves, but to secure the oak soil and acorns; they prefer the successful man to the deserving one; they break oaths and hearts to serve the state; they respect poetry, philosophy, and religion, but as means; they respect riches, statistics of national prosperity, and health, as objects; all they honor about pure Mathesis[159] and pure female virtue is the transmutation of each into impure for manufactures and armies; in the higher astronomy all they care for is the transformation of suns into odometers[160] and way-marks for pepper-fleets, and in the most exalted _magister legens_[161] they seek only an alluring tavern-sign for poor universities.

The second opinion is at least the opposite of the first, and an improvement upon it: it is, that to his Lordship, as to other great men, the race-course is the goal and the steps taken the garlands.--Fortune and misfortune differ, with him, not in _worth_, but in _manner_; both are, in his view, two converging race-tracks toward the eternity's ring of inner promotion; all accidents of this life are to him mere arithmetical examples in _unknown_ terms, which he solves, not however as a merchant, but as an indifferentialist[162] and algebraist, to whom products and multiplicands are of equal interest, and to whom it is all one whether he reckons by letters or by hundredweights.

Verily, a man has almost as much to reproach himself with, if he is discontented, as if he had committed a crime; and inasmuch as it depends upon his ocean of thoughts, whether he will raise out of it as an island an Otaheite-Arcadia or the lowest hell, he deserves all that he creates....

Nevertheless, the third opinion is the true one, and at the same time it is mine: his Lordship, how much soever he may seem to be an indeclinable man, who has no object, but is a verb in _mi_, has nevertheless the following paradigm (and so inversely we find in the most ordinary man a short plan for the most singular one): he is one of the unhappy great ones who have too much genius, too much wealth, and too little repose and knowledge, to be habitually happy; they hunt pleasure instead of virtue, and miss both, and cry out at last over every bitter drop which is given them in a sugar-loaf; like silver-plate, precisely at the point of melting in the fire of pleasure are they the most inclined to overspread themselves with a dark skin; their ambition; which otherwise hides with plans the emptiness of high life, is not strong enough for their heart, which in this emptiness withers; they do good from pride, but without the love of doing it; they play with the empty shell of life as with a ringlet, and deem it not even worth the while to shorten it; and yet they do deem it worth the while, when they, who stand through this night-frost of the soul, outwardly smiling and cold, inwardly all in a fever, without hope, fear, or faith, renouncing all, making light of everything, and shut up in themselves,--when they feel a stroke of death, a great sorrow clutch at their unhappy hearts.----Ah the poor lord! can thy heart then find no rest till it finds it under the lid of black marble?

"Ah the poor lord!" his son incessantly repeated, as with oppressed soul he went toward Maienthal. The outward heaven around him was still; a great cloud completely overspread it, but rested on a blue rim along the whole circle of the horizon. In Victor's breast, on the contrary, streams of air rushed against each other and whirled together into a hurricane, drinking up brooks and tearing up trees. His father's image hung pale in this tempest. Victor's future days were hurled to and fro.--His future life was compressed into a narrow, veiled image, and it distressed him just as much to think that he _must_ live it as _how_ he must.

What saddened him most was the mere external and trifling circumstance that his father had remained alone and concealed in the depths of the island. Once the conjecture came over him, whether the greater part of what he had witnessed had not been mere dramatic machinery which his father (who in his youth had been a tragic poet) had employed to give more firmness to his vow of silence; but he was immediately disgusted at his own heart. Why are the purest souls tormented with a multitude of disgusting, poisonous thoughts, which like spiders crawl up on the shining walls, and which they only have the trouble of crushing to death? Ah, our _victories_ are not wholly distinguishable from our _defeats_!