Part 8

"O thou good, good soul!" cried Victor, "I can now no more forget thee. Thou must--thou wilt--take an interest in my weak heart!" From his inner strings the drops of vapor that choked their music had now fallen off. His brain became a radiant landscape, in which there stood nothing but Emanuel's shining form. He arrived late at the parsonage, with a face expressive of blissful emotion; and in this glow he arrayed before his spectators the image of Clotilda, to whom he gave everything an angel has, even the wings that threatened a short stay. His friendship raised him so far above the suspicion of a suspicion, that he thought he could give his friend no warmer or tenderer proof of the same, than by the strongest sympathetic praise of Clotilda; Flamin's love for her passed over through this friendship into his soul. The feeling for the beloved of a friend carries with it an unspeakable sweetness and moral tenderness. For Victor I answer, in this matter, that he understood, indeed, how a friend can sacrifice his love to another, but not how the other can accept the offering; but for Flamin I cannot stand security that he is cool enough, and a sufficient connoisseur of men, to regard the prize-medals which Victor stamps upon Clotilda, and upon which he sets her beautiful face and his coat of arms, as only just so many coins _de confiance_, and as pledges of brotherly fidelity. He was too impetuous and too ambitious to see, or even to listen to, the truth; for his open-hearted friend had to suppress many a tender reproach, which would have tried him too much, because he had too much love of praise and fieriness of spirit, and too little self-confidence. Hence a flatterer like Matthieu fastened himself so much the more firmly with his ivy-hooks into the fissures of this rock. When he a little harshly called the nameless Emanuel an enthusiast, Victor said little more about him that day. Flamin--either because he was a Jurist, or because he was a Hotspur, or both--could endure anything better than poets, philosophers, courtiers, and enthusiasts,--one excepted, who was all these at once, namely, his Sebastian Victor.

5. DOG-POST-DAY.

The Third of May.--The Nightingale.--The Abbate Sitting on Music.

I must here--premise, once for all, that I should be very stupid if I did not notice the multitude of improbabilities in this history: I am well aware of them all; nay, I have observed some of them--e. g. in Clotilda's behavior, or those in my hero's medical doctorship--even sooner than the reader, because I have--read everything before he has. I therefore delayed no longer, but entreated my correspondent by to-day's Hofmann-mail to write me by the dog the next time, in his portrait-box, what we were all about. I told him flatly, that the devil a bit did he know, though I did, however, of the readers and their tyranny. I must tell him (I said) that they were people of sense, whom a Biographer, nay, even a Romance-architect, dared not approach with poetic deception, but they would say, like the Areopagus, "Give us the naked historical fact here, without any superfluous poetic dressing up." And in fact it was a marvel to me, I went on to say, that he should not yet know that they had so much, partly understanding and partly four-leaved clover[54] in them, that, if the greatest authors and tragic poets should undertake to be fine, and by æsthetic juggleries to excite in them fear, like cuppers, or pity, like beggars, they would cold-bloodedly let these men work till they were tired, and say, "We are not to be caught." That the Reviewers, however, were still more crazy and clever, and were perhaps the best _Skotometers_ (measurers of darkness), at the same time that they were the wretchedest _Photometers_ (light measurers) going. And finally, I said right out to my historical adjutant, that it was no injury to him, but very much to me, that I should be translated into several languages, and therein, for every improbability in the text, be dragged down into the scourging-cellar of a note, and there sorely lashed, without daring to open my mouth, if the interpreting scoundrel who translated (or transported) my gourd-bottle-case like a cask of wine, from one country to another, should, on the way, as all carriers do, outwardly besprinkle and inwardly fill up the wine with water.--He must, at least, (I entreated him) give me an answer, that I might show it to the readers, as an evidence that I had written to him.

By the next Dog-post-day, therefore, at all events, great things may be expected.--

Besides, the 4th of May comes into that also, with what should seem its two important Thanksgiving festivals for the arrival of the two Sebastians,--the little one into the world, the elder at the bathing-town.--Even Clotilda is to be there to-morrow, and Victor is very eager (and so am I) to see her in the sunshine of love beside Flamin; for over yonder all her charms seemed to bloom round a heart not yet smitten and ripened by love's ray, as flower-leaves hide the _white heart-leaves_ from the sun.... Matthieu came to-day to take leave, because he was going back to-morrow to the city. Our hero was less and less pleased with him, and a Page's history, which he related of himself, renewed Victor's resolve to fulfil soon the entreaty of the Parson's wife by ridding himself of such a fellow.

Matthieu, as Page, rendered service to the chief Tutor's lady, I believe both the greater and the lesser service. Nevertheless, he had once to smuggle an Abbate and conscience-keeper into one of her cabinets, which was destined to be the confessional and holy place to a degree of which, to be sure, her stupid, jealous husband had no notion. Now there was in the next room a musical armchair, upon which, in fact, one played with no other instrument than the rump; so soon as one sat down in it, it began its overtures, and I myself once sat in such a one at Prince Esterhazy's. Our Mat,[55] as all the citizens of Flachsenfingen called him,--some government people called him even the Evangelist,--appointed the Abbate two hours too soon; but, lest the man with the shorn peruke should be tired of waiting, he first carried in the music-making chair as resting-bench and anchoring-ground for weary expectants. Toward three of the night, when the company was gone, except the chief Tutor, the counsellor of conscience, weary of standing, let his rump sink at last into the easy-chair stuffed out with favorite arias, and woke up with his breeches the whole wailing music therein with its thrilling passages, without the least possibility of stilling the cabinet-serenade of this alarmer. At last the husband darted like a herring at the final cadences (or falls), and dragged from his organ-stool the sedentary conscience-man in the midst of counterpoint and shakes, and spoiled his quail-call for him, I believe, by an administered cudgelling. The chief Tutor's lady easily guessed the master of the chair, Mat; but so very much a matter of course is pardon at court,--not merely _past_ offences, but _future_ ones being forgiven there by good, easy female souls,--that the chief Tutor's lady did not avenge herself upon Mat, although he _served_ her two weeks and a half longer, till after just two weeks and a half....

Victor was indignant at Flamin's laughter; he loved drollery, but not bantering. His sweetened blood began gradually with this _mother of vinegar_ to grow sour towards this Mat, whose cold, ironical gallantry toward the honest Agatha of itself exasperated him, though her phlegmatic, and, as it were, married pulse, beat in his absence and in his presence at the same rate. Still more heart-burning matter and acid collected in Victor's bosom, from the fact that he, who tolerated everything,--vain men, proud ones, atheists, enthusiasts,--could nevertheless not endure men who regard virtue as a kind of refined provision-bakery, wantonness as allowed, the spirit as an almsgatherer for the flesh, the heart as a blood-syringe, and our soul as a new shoot of the body. But this was what Matthieu did, who besides had a passion for philosophizing, and threatened to infect Victor's friend, who, in fact, was as cold toward the whole world of poets and spirits as a statesman, with his philosophical cancer-poison.

In the evening he endeavored to sound, a little nearer to Flamin's ear, a blast upon a second Trumpet of Fame against the departed pseudo-Evangelist. It was in the garden that he blew it. He took the hand of which Matthieu's was not worthy into his better one, and began, with the finest and heartiest forbearance,--which one must grant even to true friendship for a hollow friend,--his iconoclastic attack. For while he charged it upon the lady of the Chamberlain, that she threw down at Agatha from her high post looks nowise cleaner than what monkeys used to throw down from their high roosts at passers-by; and while he blamed the young Page, that, like many of the nobility, only among the nobility could he scent best (perhaps by the help of contrast) the heretical odor of one belonging to the burgher-class, and that his words and looks at the palace flew like icicles at the good, warm heart of Agatha; at the same time the reproach of this May-frost toward the sister was only a pretext behind which he veiled the observation, that the Page would not be Flamin's friend, if he were not Agatha's lover.

Flamin's silence (the sign of his indignation) gave the stream of his eloquence a new and swifter descent; in addition to this a nightingale, poetizing in Le Baut's garden, woke up all the echoes of love in his soul.--He therefore grasped, of course, both of Flamin's hands in that effervescence which always transformed his steps toward an object into springs, and thereby overshot the mark. Many plans miscarry, because the heart toils after the head, and because at the end of the execution one applies less caution than at its beginning. He looked upon his beloved, the fluting throat of the nightingale set the text of his love to music, and with indescribable emotion he said: "Best one, thy heart is too good not to be outwitted by those who cannot reach thee. O if, some day, the sharp edge of court _ton_ should pass bloodily across the veins of thy breast (Flamin's looks seemed to ask, Art thou not then even satirical?)--O if he, who has no faith in virtue and disinterestedness, should one day himself cease to show any; if he should sorely betray thee; should the hand, which court-life had hardened, like a lemon-squeezer, wring blood and tears from thy heart, then, I beseech thee, despair not, only not of friendship,--for thy mother and I love thee far otherwise. O verily, at the time when thou art forced to say, Why did I not hearken to my friend who so warned me, and to my mother who so loved me?--then mayest thou come to me, to one who never changes, and who prizes thy error higher than self-interested vigilance; then would I lead thee weeping to thy mother, and say to her, take him wholly, thou only art worthy to love him." To all this Flamin said not a word. "Art thou sad, my Flamin?" "Tired!" "I am sad; the plaints of the nightingale strike upon my soul like echoes of _future_ ones," said Victor. "Are you pleased with this nightingale, Victor?" "Indescribably, as if she were a friend of my innermost soul." "Thus are people imposed on; it is _Matthieu singing_," Flamin quickly answered. For the Evangelist differed from a nightingale in nothing except size. And then Flamin, somewhat irritated, and yet with a pressure of his friend's hand, took his departure.

6. DOG-POST-DAY.

The Threefold Deception of Love.--Lost Bible and Powder-puff.-- Churching.--New Concordats with the Reader.

Knef's answer is wretched: "By your well-born's favor, dated the 6th instant, I see that the public has taste and some refinement, which does not surprise me, since the same is treated like gold-leaves, which are beaten out thin and fine, first within a book of parchment, and then between two of sheep-skin leaves, and thus, in like manner, by being passed from one book to another, and therein through the force of the press-bar, is made as fine as cavalier-paper.[56] If the public keeps on reading in this way a year or two, it may at last be more clever than Germany itself. Touching the improbabilities in our work, several such are of course desirable, because without them a biography or a romance gives miserable satisfaction, since it wants the charm by which the German hospital-ship and ship of fools, full of original romances, proves so attractive to us, ... which ship, as secretive-gland of disagreeable works, may justly be called the liver of the Republic of Letters, and the bookstore the gall-duct. But in reference to improbabilities, I am myself only too apprehensive that even the few on which we rely may in the end disappear. I am, &c."

The wag, as one may easily see, would fain pull the wool[57] over my eyes and those of the reader. For me, however, it is a magnificent document in evidence that I have done my part by writing to the rogue.

There are certain persons who, if in the evening they were very warm and friendly, the next morning are very gloomy and cold,--like Maupertuis's half-suns, which burn only on one side and disappear from us when they turn towards us the earthly half,--and if they were cold, the next time they are warm. Flamin forgot the next morning both the warm evening and the night-chill. Today is the festival of churching! Over there with Sebastian he launched out like a German police-puritan and purist, with fire-devils[58] and musketry against churching,--against infant-baptismal festivals,--against felling trees for Christmases and Whitsuntides,--against holidays, and against all the merry-makings of mankind.

Nothing in our century so enraged Victor as its haughty crusade-preachings against unfashionable follies, whereas with unfashionable vices it makes contracts of subsidy. He took a long breath to start with, and then showed that the good of a state, as of a man, consisted not in riches, but in the use of riches, not in its commercial, but in its moral worth, that the sweeping out of the ancient leaven and most of our institutions and pandects and edicts had for their object only to enhance princely incomes, not morality, and that one wanted to have vices and subjects, like the old Jews, bring their offerings only in one city, namely, the residence city,--that humanity, from time immemorial, had cut its nails only on its bare _hands_, not on its covered _feet_, which often themselves decayed on that account,--that economical and sumptuary laws were still more needful to princes themselves, at least to the highest classes, than to the lowest,--that Rome owed to her many holidays much of her patriotism.... Flamin had no eye for the little pearl-print of domestic joy, for infusory-flowerets of pleasure; on the contrary, his soul kept step with a Brutus when he strode majestically up to Pompey's statue, and with a sigh over fate drove the scissors of the Parcæ into the greatest heart of earth, which confounded its worth with its right. Victor had room in his heart for the most unlike feelings.

I cannot repeat often enough, that to-day is the churching. I will sketch it for posterity; not, however, with that curtness with which a newspaper-writer condenses the funeral of a king into three sheets, but a little more circumstantially. For the stately initial letters of this day the Parsonage had quite other reasons _in petto_ than one has ever yet, to my knowledge, been pleased to disclose to our age: three interested parties wished to deceive each other,--at least, two did a third.

In the first place, the Lady of the Parsonage wished to deceive our hero, who did not know that to-day was the birthday of his father, and that that personage--whom she had taken the liberty of inviting--was coming today for the space of five minutes. In the morning, she set her two daughters to boiling yarn, in order that they might confess nothing to Victor,--at least, not the truth; for it is a well-known superstition that yarn boils whitest when one lies soundly over the operation. Hence we should be the more watchful when women lie, and inquire whether they mean, by their poetical deceptions, to _burn anything else white_ except yarn. Her beloved Victor--that was her plan--should to-day present to her husband, whose cradle-festival[59] also fell on to-day, the usual congratulation, and afterward halve it, and carry it on to his Lordship, who was to arrive with his own birthday.

Secondly, Sebastian and she wished to deceive the old Chaplain, who had forgotten that he had been born, which absence of mind had already occurred to him at his first birthday. Mankind keep the run of another's life better than of their own; truly we make altogether too little account of a history which once was ours, and which is the shell of hours that have flown away, and yet the drops of time through which we swim do only in the distance of memory form the rainbow of enjoyment. Men know when all emperors were born and all philosophers died; women know, by reckoning time, only this, when their husbands, who are _their_ regents and classic authors, underwent both. Victor, whose delicate feeling was seared by too great attentions to himself, was glad that Eymann's shoulders must bear half of to-day's honor.

Thirdly, the Lord of the Parsonage wanted to play his deception as well as any one else, and in fact upon everybody. As this Festival-day was to him--like the three High Festivals of the Cloisters--at the same time shaving-day, on which the wisest heads make the foolishest faces, the barber must needs cut with the razor-lancet upon the skin of the soul-keeper, as upon the bark of a birch-tree, a memorial of himself; but the little blood that flowed out suggested to the Parson a cleverer thought than what the cupper left therein, which, however, secreted the nervous sap, that, according to the merest sciolists, is the grease of our mental motions, the gold solution of our most significant ideas, and the spirit of our spirit. This cleverer thought which I so much praise was, to have a vein opened in his left arm, to conceal it from the whole household, in the evening to congratulate his Lordship and everybody, and, at last, to strip up his sleeve and show the wound, like a Roman, and say, "Congratulate me, I pray, on the bleeding!" He executed his idea, and the shaver was obliged, to his amazement, to hack something else beside the chin. The wounded man escorted him even to the outer door, not so much from politeness, as in order that he might not hold forth to the whole domestic company on the subject, but keep the occurrence absolutely to himself, except in houses where there was a beard and an ear. For let an historian be ever so much the _month-hand_ of the age, and consequently the newspaper-compositor its _hour-hand_, and accordingly a woman its _second-hand_, still, after all, the beard-trimmer is both, woman and _second-hand_.

As Flamin and Victor passed down into the sitting-prinking-summer and winter-room, from amidst none but glad faces protruded one sullen one, which belonged to the Parson, who was plunging about like one possessed: there were two things which he could not possibly nose out,--his Bible and his powder-puff. Three minutes before he had thus lamented: "Am not I and my wretched life then singled out for a true Passion-history? Let an urn of fortune be given me, from which anybody else would claw out, as if he were crabbing, whole kingdoms. So soon as the Archfiend sees it to be me, he drops his dung in; and I claw that out instead of crabs and kingdoms, and nothing more. It would have gone finely to-day, the Devil saw,--we should have had until four o'clock in the afternoon no fun, but dog's-work; but then we should have broken loose; then would have come the dinner in the summer-house, the congratulation and salutation and real jollity.... And for you all this is still waiting; but to me, if the puff and the Bible do not appear, just send some of the soot and ashes (the leavings of the evening-feast) that I may brush therewith Fox's [his horse's] bit, and in the evening I can weed radishes by the summer-house."

At this moment, he had to salute, with the dipped flag of his poll, his tasselled cap, the Briton just entering,--when the gesture shook out of the cap a hair-tuft, which, to be sure, was not the long-sought Bible, but was the puff, which had been given up for lost. That is to say, the thinking and reading world, to which one does not often disclose the weightier facts, must at least come at this one,--that the Court Chaplain, just as men are snatched from among men to overtop and master the rest, precisely so bound up the hairs which his comb plucked out, into a skin-fascicle or hair-union, in order to powder therewith the others that were left standing,--which now could not, of course, by this most exalted spirit and pentameter,[60] be well christened anything else than a hair-puff. Nevertheless, Eymann's face was longer than his cap; he let this syringe of the coloring powder of his head lie and cool there, and said, "If I don't ferret out the Bible, then I don't see how this tuft alone is to get me out of the scrape."

As the Bible was sought before Luther's time, so now was the Canstein Bible, with its black beetle's-wing-shells. If anything could make this hard blow still more bitter, it was this,--that Eymann's band, like his reason, lay between the lost canonical leaves[61] as in a napkin-press; for the clergy, especially the Pope, love to make the Bible commentary a smoothing-press and finery-box to their outer man. Although he had eight other Bibles, even the simple Biblical Chrestomathy of Seiler, in the house, and to-day, at week-day church, did not need any at all, still it was certainly better and more human--that is, more foolish--that he should whistle the head of his vestry-beadle, the schoolmaster, to the window, and postpone divine service, like a reformation, by a quarter of an hour's interim, than that, instead of simply the hour of tolling, he should change nothing less than Bible and bands. Good heavens! how like exegetists and Kennicottists[62] they searched and smiled! "This hunting for the Bible," said Sebastian, "redounds to a clergyman's honor, especially as he seeks the truths in the Bible only by _daylight_, not by _funeral-torches_."

The monks, like the lighters of the street-lamps, have a _ladder_ and much oil, but with the oil they _extinguish_ the lamps and their own thirst, and with the ladder they conduct those who light them again up to the gallows.