Part 32

The reader will be vexed with this Dog-Post-Day; I, for my part, have already been vexed about it. My hero is evidently becoming entangled in the meshes of two female trains, and even in the bonds of the princely friendship... Nothing more is wanting than that Clotilda should actually be joined to the hurly-burly.----And something of this kind it becomes necessary for a mining-superintendent, an islander, to communicate confidentially to the people on the mainland.

Besides, it must be done chronologically. I will dissect this Dog-Post-Day, which reaches from November to December, into weeks. Thereby more order will be observed. For I understand the Germans. They want, like the metaphysician, to know everything from the beginning onward, very exactly, in royal octavo, without excessive brevity, and with some _citata_. They furnish an epigram with a preface, and a love-madrigal with a table of contents; they determine the zephyr by compass and the heart of a maiden by conic sections; they mark everything, like merchants, in black-letter, and prove everything, like jurists; their cerebral membranes are living parchments, their legs private surveyors'-poles and pedometers; they cut up the veil of the Nine Muses, and apply to the hearts of these damsels turners'-compasses, and insert gauging-rods in their heads; poor Clio (the muse of history) looks, for all the world, like the Consistorial Counsellor Büsching, who trudges along slowly, bent up under a land freight of surveyors'-chains, clocks to calculate _thirds_, and Harrison's longitude-watches, and interleaved writing-almanacs, so that I specially weep for the poor Büsching as often as I see him striding along, since all Germany, (from which I should have expected something different,)--every magistrate, every stupid justice of the peace, (only we of Scheerau have never saddled him,)--has loaded down the good topographical carrier and Christopher (cross-bearer), like a statue hung with pledges, from knee to nostril, (so that the good man is hardly to be seen, and I wonder how he stays on his feet,)--has palisaded, I say, and built him in with all sorts of cursed devil's whisks, with village inventories, with advertising sheets, with heraldic works, with books of ground-plats and perspective plans of pigsties.

They have even--that I may only _relate_ an example out of my own history of the German statistic stupidity, although in the very doing of it I _give one_--infected Jean Paul. Is it not an old story that he has approximately assigned in degrees, by means of a Saussure's cyanometer,[241] the blueness of the fairest eyes into which an _amoroso_ ever looked, and inspected the fairest drops that fell from them during the measurement, correctly enough, with a dew-measurer?--And has not his attempt to catch and prove female sighs by a Stegmann's measurer of the purity of the atmosphere found more than too many imitators among us?----

WEEK OF THE 22D POST-TRINITATIS, OR FROM NOV. 3d to 11th (EXCLUSIVE).

Almost the whole of this week he sat out at the Minister's. Many people, when they have been only four times in a house, come again daily, like the quotidian fever,--in the beginning, like the spring sun, every day earlier; afterward, like the autumn sun, every day later. He saw, indeed, that he could not contribute anything at this court-and-ministerial party, either a mystery, or property, or a heart, because it would resemble honest courts of justice, which--just as the monks call their property a deposit, and say nothing belongs to them--inversely promote every deposit into a piece of property, and say all belongs to them. But he made no account of that. "I come indeed only for fun," thought he, "and no harm can be done to me."----

The Minister, whom he met only over the table, had all the civility towards him which can be united with a face full of persiflage, and with a class of society in whose eyes all the world is divided into spies and thieves; but Sebastian perceived, nevertheless, that he looked upon him as a smatterer in medicine and the serious sciences,--as if they were not all serious,--and as an adept merely in wit and in the liberal arts. He was, however, too proud to turn to him any other than the empty new-moon-side, and concealed from him all that might convert him. Consequently, Victor must needs, in the eyes of the stupidest government-officer who had seen it, have deprived himself of all respect by the fact that, when the Minister started an interesting conversation with his brother, the Regency-President, about imposts, alliances, or the exchequer, he either did not attend, or ran off, or looked up the women.----Then, too, he loved in the Prince only the man; the Minister loved only the Prince. Victor could himself, when with January, deliver discourses on the advantages of republics, and the latter would often, in his enthusiasm, (if the supreme courts and his stomach had allowed it,) gladly have raised Flachsenfingen to a free state, and himself to the President of Congress therein. But the Minister hated all this with a mortal hatred, and fastened on all political free-thinkers--on a Rousseau, on all Girondists, all Feuillants, all Republicans, and all philosophers--the name of _Jacobin_, as the Turks call all foreigners, Britons, Germans, Frenchmen, etc., _Franks_. Meanwhile this was a reason why Victor now took a greater liking to Mat, who thought better on this subject, and why he fled from the father to the daughter.

This week he got into Joachime's good graces. She gave to the fine and fragrant duo of fools, as we do to _virtue_, only the second prize, and to my hero, as we do to _inclination_, the prize-medal. But as he respected, at most, merely a certain sentimentalism in friendship and in love, he could, he thought, have ridden through the moon with this waggish girl, without sighing _for_ her (though he might, indeed, _over_ her). But these jolly ones, my Bastian, have seen the old Harry; for whenever they change to anything else, one changes with them to the same thing. She told him she wanted to give _pleasure_, like a Lutheran holy picture, but she would not be _adored_, like a Catholic one. She prepossessed him most by the gift peculiar to her sex, of understanding tender allusions,--women are so easy at guessing the meaning of others, because they always oblige others to guess their meaning, and _complete_ and _conceal_ each _half_ with equal success. But among her attractions I reckon also her constraint before the Princess, and before those who listened with their--eyes. For the rest, his heart, which Clotilda had rejected, was now in the situation of children who have made a bet that they will receive blows upon their hands without crying, and who still continue to smile when the tears already flow.

WEEK OF THE 23d POST-TRINITATIS, OR 46th OF THE YEAR 179-.

Now he is there even in the forenoon. It is worthy of notice, that on St. Martin's day he scraped her powdered forehead with the powder-knife, and that he applied to her for some court offices in connection with the toilet. "I can be your rouge-box bearer, as the Great Mogul has tobacco-pipe and betel-bearers, or else your _cravatier ordinaire_, or your _sommier_ (i. e. prayer-cushion-bearer).--I would, if you did not kneel yourself on the cushion, myself do it before you.----I knew in Hanover a handsome Englishman who had his left knee stuffed and padded, because he did not know whom he should to-day have to adore, and how long."

It is something quite as important, that on St. Jonas's day he forced her to accept a pair of fine gloves, on which a very simple face was painted. "It was his own," he said; "she should have the face only by night, in bed, in, or on, her hand, that it might look as if he kissed her hand through the whole November night."

I go on with my pragmatic extracts from this siege-journal, and find recorded on Leopold's day that, as early as in the forenoon, Joachime said she would have her parrot, if she kept a master of languages for him, repeat nothing out of the whole dictionary except the word _perfide_! "Every lover," said she, "should keep a poll for himself, which should incessantly cry out to him, _perfide_!"--"The ladies," said my hero, "are alone to blame: they want to be loved too long; often whole weeks, whole months. The like of that is beyond our powers. Have not the Jesuits made even love to God periodical? Scotus limits it to Sunday, others to the festival days.--Coninch says, it is enough if one loves Him once every four years.--Henriquez adds a year more to it.--Suarez says, it is enough if it is only done before one's death.----To many ladies the intermediate times have hitherto fallen; but the hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the days of betrothal, of burial, form just as many different sects among the Jesuits of Love."--Joachime made a beginning of putting on an angry look. The court-physician loved nothing better with a fair one than a quarrel, and added: "_C'est à force de se faire haïr qu'elles se font aimer--c'est aimer que de bouder--ah, que je vous prie de vous fâcher!_"--His humor had carried him beyond the mark.--Joachime had reason enough to fulfil his prayer for her wrath.--He wanted to continue the quarrel in order to settle it, but as there are cases where the _aggravation_ of an offence brings about forgiveness quite as little as the _taking of it back_ step by step, he did wisely in coming away.

He wondered that he should think of her all day long. The feeling of having done her wrong brought her face with a suffering expression before his softened soul, and all her features were at once ennobled. Tacitus says, we hate another when we have offended him; but good men often love another merely on that account.

The day following, Ottomar's day,--_Ottomar_! great name, which makes the long funeral procession of a great past sweep by all at once before me in the dark,--he found her serious, neither seeking nor shunning him. The two fools remained in her eyes the two fools, and gained nothing in any way. As, therefore, he clearly perceived that out of a transient resentment there had grown true repentance for her previous openness,--of which he seemed to have made too free a use and too selfish an interpretation,--it was now his duty to do in earnest that which he had hitherto done in joke, namely, to seek her and get her to be reconciled.

But she stood all the time by the Princess, and nothing was done.

I have not said it myself, because I knew the reader would see it without me,--that my hero thinks Joachime regards him as the image-worshipper of her charms, and as the moon-man, or satellite attracted by her. My hero has, therefore, long since made up his mind to leave her in this error. As to removing such an error,--for _that_ a man or a woman seldom has strength enough; but Victor had, besides, several reasons for indulging her with faith in his love (that is, himself, also, with faith in hers). In the first place, he wanted to conceal the reason of his coming; secondly, he knew that in the great world, and among the Joachimes, a lover is sought for only as third man in the game,--with them there is no dying of love, one does not even live on it; thirdly, he reserved for himself in all cases the sheet-anchor of making earnest out of jest; "when the knife is at my throat," thought he, "then I will set myself down and fall truly in love with her, and then all will be well"; fourthly, a coquette makes a _coquet_.[242] ... Here I began already, as is well known, to be vexed about the 22d Post-Day, although I know as well as anybody why all mankind, even the most sincere, even the male kind, incline to little intrigues towards their beloved; that is to say, not merely because they are little and _reciprocated_, but because one thinks by his intrigues to give more than he steals. Only the highest and noblest love is without real trickery.

WEEKS OF THE 24th AND 25th POST-TRINITATIS.

On Sunday there was a ball. "Very naturally," said he, "she will not look on me. In ball-dress the fair sex are more implacable than in morning dress." Hardly had she seen him when she came to meet him, like an agitated heaven, with her fixed stars of brilliants and her pearl-planets, and in this splendor begged of him the forgiveness of her freak. She had at first made believe angry, she said, then had actually become so; and not until the next day had seen that she did wrong to appear so and had a right to be so. This prayer for forgiveness made our Medicus more humble than was necessary. She begged him sportively to beg her pardon, and made him acquainted with her percussion-gold of sudden resentment.

For a space of two days this Westphalian peace was kept.

But one quarrel with a maiden, like one fool, makes ten; and unfortunately one only likes the angry one so much the better (at least, better than the indifferent), just as people run most after _those_ Methodist preachers who damn them the most roundly. Joachime grew daily more susceptible of anger,--which he ascribed to an increasing love,--but so did he, too. Let them have spent the whole visit in the finest imperial and domestic peace, at the leave-taking all was put upon a war-footing again, ambassadors and furloughed ones (if I may be allowed these poetical expressions) recalled. Then with the angry sediments in his heart he withdrew, and could hardly wait for the moment of the next interview,--i. e. of his or her justification. Thus did they spend their hours in the writing of peace-instruments and manifestoes. The matter of dispute was as singular as the quarrel itself: it concerned their demands of friendship; each party proved that the other was the faulty one, and demanded too much. What most enraged our Medicus was, that she allowed the fine and the fragrant fools to kiss her hand, which she forbade him to do, and in truth without any reasons for the decision. "If she would only lie to me, and say, such or such is the reason,--that at least would be something," said he; but she did him not the pleasure. To my sex, refusal without reasons, even conjecturable ones, is a pit of brimstone, a threefold death; upon Joachime, reasons and cabinet-sermons had equal influence.

EXTRA-LEAF ON THE ABOVE.

I have a hundred times, with my legal burden of proof on my back, thought of women who are able, with a certain effort, to act as well as to believe without any reasons. For surely, in the end, everybody must (according to all philosophers) reconcile himself to actions and opinions for which reasons are entirely wanting; for, since every reason appeals to a new one, and this again rests upon one which refers us to one, which again must have its own reason, it follows that (unless we mean to be forever going and seeking) we must finally arrive at one which we accept without any reason whatever. Only the scholar fails in this, that precisely the most important truths--the highest principles of morals, of metaphysics, &c.--are the ones which he believes without reasons, and which, in his agony,--thinking to help himself out thereby,--he names necessary truths. Woman, on the contrary, makes lesser truths--e. g. there must be drives, invitations, washing to-morrow, &c.--the necessary truths, which must be accepted without the insurance and reinsurance of reasons;--and just this it is which gives her such an appearance of soundness. For them it is easy to distinguish themselves from the philosopher, who thinks, and into whose eyes the sun of truth flames so horizontally that he cannot see, for it, either road or landscape. The philosopher is obliged, in the weightiest actions,--the moral,--to be his own lawgiver and law-keeper, without having the reasons therefor given him by his conscience. With a woman, every inclination is a little conscience, and hates _Heteronomies_,[243] and beyond that pronounces no reasons, just as the great conscience does. And it is precisely this gift, of acting more from private sovereignty than from reasons, which makes women so very suitable for men; for the latter would rather give them ten commands than three reasons.

_End of the Extra-Leaf on the above_.

What was full as bad was, that Joachime at last, only for the sake of removing his documentary piles of complaints and imperial grievances, allowed him her fingers, without giving him the least reason for it. He could, therefore, show no title of possession, and, in case of need, would have had no one who could protect him therein.

There is, however, a well-grounded rule of right or Brocardicon[244] for men: that everything grows firmer with women, when one builds upon it, and that a little stolen favor legitimately belongs to us, so soon as we sue for a greater. This rule of right bases itself upon the fact that maidens always abate with us, as one does to Jews in trade, the half, and give only a couple of fingers when we want the hand. But if one has the fingers, then arises, out of the Institutions, a new title, which adjudicates to us the hand: the hand gives a right to the arm, and the arm to everything that is appended to it, as _accessorium_. Thus must these things be managed, if right is to remain right. There will, in fact, have to be a little manual written by me, or some other honest man, wherein one shall expound and elucidate to the female sex with the torch of legal learning the _modos_ (or ways) _acquirendi_ (of winning) them. Otherwise many modi may go out of use. Thus, e. g., according to civil law, I am rightful proprietor of a movable thing, if it was stolen thirty years ago (in fact, it should be further back, and I should not be made to suffer for it, that one began the stealing later); so, too, by prescription of thirty minutes (the time is relative) everything belonging to a fair one lawfully falls to me, which (of a movable nature--and everything about her is movable) I may have purloined from her, and therefore one cannot begin soon enough to steal, because before the theft the prescription cannot begin to take effect.

Specification is a good modus. Only one must be, like me, a Proculian,[245] and believe that a strange article belongs to him who has imparted to it a different form; e. g. to me, the hand which I have put into another shape by pressure.

The late Siegwart said: _Confusio_ (mingling of tears) is my modus. But _commixtio_ (mixture of dry articles, e. g. the fingers, the hair) is now with almost all of us the _modus acquirendi_.

I was going once to treat the whole thing according to the doctrine of the _Servitudes_,[246] where a woman has a thousand things to suffer (though all these servitudes are entirely extinguished by the consolidation[247] of marriage); but I do not myself any longer rightly retain the doctrine of the Servitudes, and would much rather examine any one in them than be examined myself.----

I return to the Medicus. Since, then, he knew that a kissed hand is a warrant to the cheeks,--but the cheeks the sacrificial tables of the lips,--these of the eyes,--the eyes of the neck;--accordingly he would have proceeded exactly according to his text-book. But with Joachime, as with all antipodes of coquettes, _no favor paved the way for another, not even the great one for the small one_; you passed from one antechamber to another,--and what said my hero to this? Nothing but "Thank God that for once there is one better than she seemed, who, under the appearance of being our plaything, plays with us, and makes her coquetry the veil of virtue!"

He felt now, as often as her name was mentioned, a soft warmth breathe through his bosom.

FROM THE END OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR (DEC. 1) TO THE END OF THE CIVIL (DEC. 31).

Flamin, whose patriotic flames found no air in the session-chamber, and stifled himself first, grew shyer and wilder every day. It was something new to him, that it took whole boards and commissions to do what one person might have done,--that the limbs of the state (as is also the case, indeed, with the limbs of the body) are moved by the _short arm_ of the lever, so as to do less with greater power, and a board, particularly, resembles the body, which, according to Borellus,[248] spends 2,900 times as much strength on a leap as the load which it has to lift requires. He hated all great people, and never went to see any: the page Mat did not even get visits from him. My Sebastian made his visits to _him_ seldomer, because his leisure and his calms of dissipation fell exactly upon Flamin's working hours. This separation, and the eternal sitting at Schleunes's,--which Flamin, from not being acquainted with Joachime's influence, was obliged at all events to ascribe to Clotilda's, for future visits to whom Victor must be creating a pretext by his present ones,--and even the Prince's favor towards the latter, which in Flamin's eyes could not be any result of his spirit of freedom and his sincerity;--all this drew the intertwined bonds of their friendship, which had made life to them hitherto a four-handed piece of music, further and further asunder; the faults and the moral dust which Victor could once brush off from his darling he hardly dared to blow off; they behaved towards each other more delicately and attentively. But my Victor, to whose heart Fate applied so many tongues of vampyres, and who was compelled to shut up in _one_ breast the bitterness of lost love and the woe of failing friendship, was made by it all--really merry. O, there is a certain gayety of stagnation and grief, which is a sign of the soul's exhaustion, a smile like that on men who die of wounds in the diaphragm, or that on the shrivelled, drawn-back lips of mummies! Victor plunged into the stream of amusements, in order, under it, not to hear his own sighs. But often, to be sure, when he had all day long been sprinkling over ruined follies comic salt, which full as often bites the hand of the sower and makes it ache, and when he had not been able all day long to refresh himself with any eye, to which he would have dared to show a tear in his own,--when, thus weary of the present, indifferent to the future, wounded by the past, he had just passed by the last fool, the Apothecary, and when from his bow-window he looked out into the night hanging full of worlds, and into the tranquillizing moon, and upon the eastern clouds over St. Luna,--then were his swollen heart and his swollen eyeball sure to burst, and the tears which night concealed to stream down from his balcony on the hard pavement. "O, only _one_ soul," cried his innermost being with all the tones of melancholy,--"give but _one_ soul, thou eternal, loving, creative nature, to this poor, languishing heart, which seems so hard and is so soft, which seems so joyous and yet is so sad, seems so cold and yet is so warm!"