Part 28

"The Chaplain had the peculiarity of many people, that, in the midst of the choir of joys and visits, he thought on his most trifling employments; e. g., on the wedding day, of his mole-traps. To-day, in the servants' room,--while his Lordship was communicating his secret instruction to the Court-Physician,--he was cutting in halves seed-potatoes. There were few to whom he could intrust the cutting up of this fruit, because he knew how seldom a man possesses sufficient stereometry of the eye to split a potato into two equal conic sections or hemispheres. He would sooner have passed the seed-time than have divided a germinal globe into unequal sections; and he said, 'All I want is order.'--It may throw a shade over my hero, if it comes out,--and certainly it must through the press,--and especially if it reaches the ears of Nuremberg patricians and people in offices and _membra_ of the supreme court, that Victor in the afternoon marched in state behind the Chaplain and Appel over the vegetable garden, and there executed what they call in some provinces planting potatoes. They gave him the credit, that he incorporated the subterranean bread-fruit in the ground at quite as symmetrical distances as the chaplain; in fact, both looked sharply after the rectitude of the potato-row, and their eyes were the parallel rulers of the beds. The Chaplain had already beforehand looked after and helped on the plough behind a dioptric rule or alidade, in order that the field about which I and the judicial _membra_ are now standing might be cut up into equal prisms or beds. When at evening both came home with great gravity and little waistcoats, the whole house loved him so that they could have eaten him; and the Parson's wife asked him what he would have done in his waistcoat, if the Chamberlain's lady had met him; would he have made a bow or an apology, or done nothing?

"'O thou dear Germany!' (he cried and smote his hands together,) 'shall not then the whole country make a joke, except as the court decrees?' (Here Victor looked at the old, deaf coachman Zeusel; for every humorous effusion he regularly addressed to him who least understood it. I will here, however, have it addressed to the patricians and _membra_.) 'Is there, then, my dear man, nothing in the country but gallowses and carpenters and officers of justice, so that, I mean, the former cannot touch an axe, unless the latter have struck the first blow with it? Will you, then, get all follies, like fashions, from above downward, as a wind always roars in the upper regions of the atmosphere before it whistles down below at our windows?--And where, then, is there an imperial recess or a vicariate conclusion which forbids a German of the empire to play the fool? I hope, Zeusel, a time is yet to come when you and I and every one will have sense enough to have his own, and his own private folly, begotten of his flesh and blood, as Autodidact in all folly and wisdom.--O men, poor creatures! catch, I pray, at the wing and tail feathers of joy amidst the forced marches of your days! O ye poor creatures! will no good friend, then, scribble an imperial folio, and prove to you that, like the Devil in the Apocalypse, you have but a short time? Ah! enjoyment promises so little,--hope performs so little,--the mowing and planting days of joy stand in the Berlin Almanac so few in number,--if, now, you were absolutely so stupid as to put away and lay up whole hours and olympiads full of pleasure, like preserves in your cellar, in order, the Devil knows when, to come upon them as fifty or sixty entire pickled and salted years----I say, if you did not press out on the cluster of every hour the berry of each moment at least with some lemon-squeezers----what would come of it at last?... nothing but the moral to my first and last fable, which I once made in the presence of a Hanoverian.' ...

"I wish the reader wanted it; for it runs thus: '_The Stupid Marmot_ is the title. The said marmot was once led by the full crop of a pigeon, the contents of which he was eating, to the prize question, whether it would not be better, if, instead of single grains of corn, he should rather bring in pigeons with whole corn magazines in their throats. He did so. On a long summer day, he arrested half a flock of pigeons with full crops. He slit open not a single crop, however, but, though hungry, saved all up for evening and morning: first, in order to catch a goodly lot of pigeons; secondly, to feast on the batch of corn thoroughly softened in the evening. At last, when evening came, he ripped open the crops of his tithe-officers, six, nine, all,--not a grain was any longer there; the prisoners had already digested all themselves, and the marmot had been as stupid as a miser.'"

So far the Third and the Fortieth Dog-Post-Days.--Poor Victor!

POSTSCRIPT.--The history stops now in the month of August, and the historian in the fore part of October,--only a month lies between the two.

41. DOG-POST-DAY.

Letter.--Two new Incisions of Fate.--His Lordship's Confession of Faith.

One must excuse a man, who, like horses, increases his speed as night and home draw near, from a tenth intercalary day; at the end of a life and of a book, man makes few digressions.

I have already said, that nothing presses the spiritual and spinal marrow out of a man more than when his misfortune allows him no action; fate still held our Victor fast with one hand, in order to beat him sore with the other, when in these weeks of sorrow the water-wheel of time filled up _two_ new lachrymatories out of the hearts of men, and emptied them into eternity. First came the dismal tidings, like a funeral knell, to Victor's ear, that the sometime friend of his youth, Flamin, was about to expiate a step which, but for the falling out with him, he never would have taken, with his death. Some days after the canicular holidays,--precisely when, a year previous, the poor prisoner had entered on his new office with so many philanthropic hopes,--that rumor came forth like a pestilential cloud out of the session-chambers. Victor flew, incredulous and yet trembling, to the Apothecary, in order to get, by inquiry, a refutation. The latter candidly unfolded before him--for the very reason that he despised and wanted to shame the Court-Physician--all the _rapport_-lists of the court and the reports of the _cercles_, and recited to him so much as this out of them: it was not otherwise. Victor heard, what he already presupposed, that the Prince had on now the leading-strings or curb-bit of his own wife, and that she came nearer to him in consequence of Clotilda's withdrawal, and, with her _ear_-[171] and _ring_-finger, moved the bridle, threaded through the _nose_-ring, as if she were in fact nothing less than his--mistress; which is a new and mournful example, how easily in these times a fine married lady steals the privileges of a concubine. Zeusel found it natural, "that she, as the friend of the Minister, who, as well as his son Matthieu, had been the friend of the Chamberlain, should seek to avenge the death of the latter upon Flamin, and that the Minister, in order the better to get his hand into the handle of the Parcæ's scissors, and cut in twain the thread of the Regency-Councillor's life, himself ordained and maintained the continued absence of his son, that the latter might not in any way protect the unhappy favorite." In all this there was not a true word,--Victor knew better; but so much the worse. O, does not everything betray that Matthieu has drawn the Princess, by hints respecting Flamin's birth, into his faithless interests, in order, like magicians, to destroy at a distance, and by few characters? Would the mere fear of the stigma of the challenge hold him so long beyond the limits of the country?--Add to this, that the sun of princely favor brooded more and more warmly over the ministerial frog-spawn. It is true,--and Victor did not deny it,--one might expect of the Princess that she would in time overturn with her foot the Matthieu's- or Jacob's-ladder on which she climbed the princely heart, (whereas she had previously reached only January's _hand_,) just as the marten lets the drowsy eagle snatch him up into the air, and only up aloft begins to hack at him, and keeps doing it till the bearer falls and dies; but by this time, I think, her steadfast gratitude toward Schleunes is abundantly excused with honest men by the fact, that still more remains to be gotten of the uncompleted _gift_. An old lawgiver ordained a punishment for every case of _ingratitude_; in my opinion, every one falls into the same fault as he, if one censures and punishes every instance of gratitude, since often the most selfish at court may have his good reasons for it.[172]

Victor went sadly into his chamber, and looked on Flamin's picture, and said: "O, may it not be the will of Heaven, poor fellow, that it should be no longer possible to save thee." Victor could never, three days after an offence, any longer avenge himself. "I forgive every one," he used to say, "only not friends and maidens, because I am too fond of both." But what helping hand, what twig, could he reach down into prison to the sinking Flamin?--All he could do was to go to the Prince with a naked prayer for his pardon. Thousands of generous acts remain undone, because one is not entirely certain that they will produce their legitimate fruits. But Victor went nevertheless; he had made for himself the golden rule, _to act for another even when the result is not a matter of certain hope_. For if we chose first to wait for that certainty, sacrifices would be quite as rare as they were devoid of merit.

He went to the Prince, for the first time after so long, an interval,--with the disadvantage against him of terminating a long absence with a petition,--spoke with the fire of a recluse in behalf of his Flamin,--besought the Prince for the postponement of his fate till his Lordship should return,--received the decision, "Your honored father and I must simply leave it in the hands of justice,"--and was coldly and proudly dismissed.

Now precisely it was, on the 5th of September of this year, when a great eclipse of the sun made the soul as well as the earth sad and gloomy, that the water-wheel of time had filled the first lachrymatory vessel in his breast; it rolled over farther, and the second overflowed. Clotilda's letter arrived on the 22d of September, at the beginning of autumn.

"DEAR FRIEND:--

"Your honored father was still in London at the beginning of February, and had much _French_ correspondence; then he went off to Germany, and since that my mother knows nothing of his movements. May Destiny watch over his important life! Upon three oaths,[173] which his absence makes inviolable, hang many tears, many hearts, and, O God! a human life.--I enclose a leaf from your honored father, which he wrote at my mother's, and which contains a philosophy that makes my spirit and my prospects more and more sad. Ah, although you once said, neither the fear nor the hopes of man hit their mark, but always something else; still I have the mournful right to believe my apprehensions and all the dreams of anxiety, as I have hitherto been mistaken in nothing but in hope.--How insatiable is man!--But even though all should come true, and I should become too unhappy, still I should say, how could I now be too unhappy, had I not once been too happy?"----

You will readily forgive me, if I am silent about London, and about the impression which it might make on so _distrait_ a heart as mine. The active stir of freedom, and the glitter of luxury and of commerce, simply oppress a sorrowing soul, and do not make one more cheerful who was not cheerful before. Be happy, beloved native city, my heart said, be long and greatly happy, as I was in thee in my youth!--But then I love rather to hasten with my mother to her country-seat, where once three good children[174] so joyously bloomed, and there I am inexpressibly softened, and then I fancy myself happier here than among the happy. I only fancy it, I may well say: for when I contemplate there all the playthings of those good children, their task-books and their little clothes; when I seat myself under three cherry-trees planted close together, which they in play had set out in the child's garden, which was too narrow for them; and then when I think how on this stage they exercised and built up their hearts for a happier life than they have won, for a higher virtue than their relations allowed them, and for better society than they have found,--then am I sorely distressed, and then I feel as if I must weep and could say, I too was born in England, and was educated in Maienthal by Emanuel.

"Ah, I cannot hide the feelings of my heart, when I write the name of that great soul.--He was often on a mountain here, where lies a ruined church, and where he climbed a column that was still standing, in order to lift his eye to the stars, above which he now dwells.--I was just on the point of writing to you now what my mother told me of his departure; but it makes me too sad, and I will tell it to you orally. I visit this mountain very often, because one can look down on the whole plain eastward: here is the old tree, still hanging with its roots and twigs down into the quarry, which lies full of broken temple columns. Emanuel often at evening took thither the child whom he loved most,[175] and who, when _he_ prayed on the column, with one arm wound round the tree, looked out and leaned out, longing and singing, over the broad landscape, and, without knowing it, wept in sweet distress at his own tones, and at the distant fields, and at the pale morning-red which gleamed back from the red of evening. Once, when the teacher asked the child, 'Why art thou so still, and leavest off singing?'--the answer was, 'Ah, I long for the morning-red. I should like to lie in it and go through it, and look, over into the bright lands behind there.'--I often seat myself under that tree, and lean my head against it, and silently follow with my eye the stretch of distance even to the horizon, which stands before Germany; and no one disturbs my weeping or my still prayer.

"I was there to-day for the last time; for to-morrow we go with my mother, without whom my orphan heart can no longer live, back to Germany, to the best friend of

"The truest friend,

"CL."

O thou good soul!----

How hard, after this, sounds the singular leaf of his Lordship, which seems to be no letter, but a cold apology for his future conduct. "Life is a petty; empty game. If my many years have not refuted me, then a refutation by my few remaining ones is neither necessary nor possible. A single unhappy man outweighs all drunken ones. For us insignificant things, insignificant things are good enough; for sleepers, dreams. Therefore, neither in us nor out of us is there anything worthy of wonder. The sun near to is a ball of earth; an earthly globe is merely the more frequent repetition of an earthly clod.--What is not sublime in itself and for itself can no more be made so by repetition than the flea by the microscope; at most, smaller. Why should the tempest be sublimer than an electric experiment, a rainbow greater than a soap-bubble? If I resolve a great Swiss landscape into its constituent parts, I get fir-needles, icicles, grasses, drops, and gravel.--Time resolves itself into moments, peoples into individuals, genius into thoughts, immensity into points; there is nothing great.--A trigonometrical proposition, often thought over, becomes a tautological one; an oft-read conceit, stale; an old truth, indifferent.--Again I assert, what becomes great by steps remains little. If the poetic power, which paints either _images_ or _passions_, is not already admirable in the invention of the most commonplace image, then it is nowhere so. Every one can, like the poet, put himself into the place of another, at least in some degree.--I hate inspiration, because it is raised as well by liquors as by fancies, and because, during and after it, one is most inclined to _intolerance_ and _sensual pleasure_.--The greatness of a sublime deed consists not in the execution, which amounts to mere corporeal pitiablenesses, going and staying; not in the simple resolve, because the opposite one, e. g., that of murdering, requires just as much energy as that of dying; not in its rarity, because we all are conscious in ourselves of the same capacity for the act, but have not the motive;--not in any of these, but in our boasting.--We hold our very last error for truth, and only the last but one as none at all; our today as holy, and every future moment as the crown and heaven of its predecessors. In old age, after so many labors, after so many appeasings, the spirit has the same thirst, the same torment. As in a higher eye everything is diminished, a spirit or a world, in order to be great, should be so even before a so-called Divine eye; but then the one or the other would have to be greater than God, for one never admires his own image.--In my youth, I composed a tragedy, and put all the above principles into the mouth of my hero, and made him, shortly before he plunged the dagger into his own heart, add these further words: But perhaps death is sublime; for I do not comprehend it. And so, then, will I lead aside the columns of blood which leap up out of the heart and so sportively keep up the human head and the human individuality at such an elevation, as a fountain bears the hollow ball balanced on its flickering stream,--this fountain will I draw off with the dagger, so that the _I_ may be precipitated.--I shuddered at this character at the time; but afterward, I reflected upon it, and it became my own!"

* * * * *

Frightful man! Thy blood-stream and the _I_ on the top of it have perhaps already collapsed, or will soon fall through.--And precisely this dark presentiment is also in the hearts of Victor and Clotilda----O that thou, thou other bowed man, whom I dare not name here before the public, mightest guess that I mean thee, that thou, just as well as the unhappy Lord, art eating away thy own self like blood-sucking corpses, and that, in the _starry night_ of life, thou still bearest a deadly _mist_ of thine own around thee! O the spectacle of a magnanimous heart, which merely through ideas makes itself helpless, and which lies inaccessible and benumbed in its arbor of philosophical poison-trees, often dyes our days black!--Believe, not that his Lordship is anywhere right! How can he find anything to be small, without holding it over against something great? Without reverence there could be no contempt; without the feeling of disinterestedness, no perception of selfishness; without greatness, no littleness. When thou canst explain the tears of the adagio by the vibration of the strings, or by the blood-globules and threefold skins of a beautiful face thy regard for the same; then and as well canst thou think to justify thy rapture for the _spiritual_ in Nature by means of its corporeal filaments, which are nothing but the _flute-pieces_ and flat and sharp valves of the unplayed harmony. The sublime resides only in thoughts, whether those of the Eternal One, who expresses them by letters made of worlds, or those of man, who reads them and spells them out!--

I postpone the refutation of his Lordship to another book, although this, too, is a refutation.--

42. DOG-POST-DAY.

Self-Sacrifice.--Farewell Addresses to the Earth.--Memento Mori.--Walk.--Heart of Wax.

There is a sorrow which lays itself with a great sucker-sting to the heart and thirstily drains its tears,--the whole heart runs and gushes and spasmodically contracts its innermost fibres, in order to become a stream of tears, and does not feel the wrench of grief under the deadly-sweet effusion.... Such a deadly-sweet pang our Victor felt at Clotilda's letter.

But deadly bitter was that of his Lordship. "O this tormented and worn-out spirit," he exclaimed, "longed, indeed, even on the Isle of Union, for the repose of the dead;--ah! it has surely fled already from the sweltry earth, which seemed to it so small and oppressive." If this were so, then all the oaths, on whose remission Flamin's life hung, were made eternal, and he was lost. If it was not so, then was there at least no hope of his return, since Emanuel's death and confession, Flamin's imprisonment, and all the previous occurrences, all of which his Lordship might learn, had wiped out his whole finely delineated plan. Now a voice cried aloud in Victor's soul, "Save the brother of thy beloved!"--Yes, a way to do it was at hand;--but it was perjury. If, namely he committed that crime by disclosing to the Prince who Flamin was, then he was rescued. But his conscience said, "No!--The downfall of a virtue is a greater evil than the downfall of a man,--only death, but not sin, must be;--shall it cost me still more to break my word, than it has hitherto cost me to keep it?"

It is well known that on the day of this year's equinox, when he had received the two London leaves, there was a cold storm of snow and rain, from which the summer afterward seemed to bloom out a second time.--Victor went on in his, pondering. He called up before him once more, with all its moments, that great day on the Isle of Union, and found that he had absolutely sworn to his Lordship forever to be silent, except an hour before his own death. We may still remember that he had at the time reserved this very condition, because he had once sworn to Flamin to throw himself down with him from the observatory, if they should be obliged to part as enemies; and because now, when Clotilda's sisterly relation was announced to him, he feared beforehand it might come to that separation and suicide. In that case, he would at least reserve to himself the liberty, only an hour before his death, of saying to his friend that he was innocent, and that Flamin's beloved was only a--sister.

"So then, an hour before my death, I may disclose all?--O God!--Yes!----Yes!--I will die, that so I may speak!" he cried, enkindled, throbbing, fluttering, exalted above life.--The tempest hurled the torrents of heaven and the powdered glaciers against the windows, and the day sank gloomily in the whelming flood.... "O," said our friend, "how I long to escape out of this black storm of life,--into the still, bright ether,--to the steadfast, immovable breast of death, which does not disturb sleep...."

If he disclosed to the Prince that Flamin was his own son, then was the latter delivered, and he needed only an hour after that to--destroy himself.

And that would he gladly do; for what had he left on earth except--recollections? O, too many recollections, too few hopes--Who would be grieved at his fall?--the loved one, who, after all, resigns him,--or her brother, whom he saves and flies from,--or his good lord, who perhaps rests already in the earth,--or his Emanuel, whose loving arms are already crumbling to dust?--"Yes, him only will my dying affect," said he, "for he will long for his faithful scholar, he will on some sun open his arms and look down along the way to the earth, and I shall come up with a great wound on my breast, and my streaming heart will lie naked on the wound.--O Emanuel, despise me not, I shall cry; I was truly unhappy, after thou hadst died; receive me and heal the wound!"