Part 7

Clotilda, who with her female friends overheard the funeral oration in the adjoining chamber, at first held them back beseechingly from opening it. But when Victor said, "Cold form, erect thyself, and show men the tears which flow from a tender heart that breaks for love,"--then she took leave of them with a hasty "good-night," unable to master an emotion which upheaved her whole being. When they reported to him the time of her withdrawal, then did he, who was now already so weary, weak, and tender, become inexpressibly so,--all the lights which his effort had brightened on his countenance seemed to melt away in love like moonlight in dew-drops,--he waited not for his chamber to be empty, but showed that which Clotilda in hers would conceal,--he could even contemplate the unveiled wax statue with softened spirit, and said smilingly: "I fancy, the reason why I have let the _whole_ of me be repeated in wax is the same for which the Catholic does it with single limbs, in order to hang them on a saint, and thereby give thanks or pray for recovery; or like the Roman Emperors, whose wax statues the physicians visited after the death of the original."[44] The company went away, and he was at last alone. The moon, which had risen at 11 o'clock and 57 minutes, just began to throw its still low and waning light up against the windows of Clotilda's sitting-room. Victor put out his night-lamp, and, in order not to sink with his still tossing, dreaming heart into the dreams of sleep, seated himself at the window, almost in the wonted place of his wax copy and in a similar attitude----when fate ordained, that he, who to-day had given out the wax mummy to be his own person, should now inversely be looked upon as the image--by Clotilda! She stood at some distance from her window, on which no light fell but that from heaven; Victor, as this latter could not yet reach him, was quite in shadow, and turned towards her with five quarters of his profile. Scarcely had he observed that she fixed upon him an unchanging glance, that seemed as if it would not only take him in but go through him, when he guessed that she confounded him with the man of wax; he also observed out of the corner of his eye that something white fluttered around her, i. e. that she often dried her eyes. But how would it have been possible for his fine feeling by the least motion to take away from her her error, and to make her blush with confusion for her innocent gaze! Another, e. g. the misunderstood Mat, would in such an emergency have composedly straightened himself up and looked indifferently out of the window; but he ossified himself, as it were, in his attitude of lifelessness. But only the night and the distance could conceal from her his trembling, when her tears shed for his corpse seized like a hot stream his dismembered heart, and softened and dissolved the little of it which this evening had still left whole into a burning wave of love. Children's tears flow more freely, when one shows them sympathy; and in this hour of exhaustion, Victor, who was generally made more hard by another's sympathy for him, grew softer; and when Clotilda seated herself at the window, to lean upon it her weary head, it seemed to him as if something exhorted him now to verify that which he had said to-day to the statue: Cold form, erect thyself, and show men the tears which flow from a soft heart.

Clotilda at length closed the curtains and disappeared. But he still cautiously acted for some time longer the part of his image, and just when he made less effort to play the statue he succeeded better. All his thoughts flowed now like balm over the lacerated spots of his inner man, and he said: "Though thou art only my friend, I am satisfied, and thou canst appease this bosom's tumultuous yearnings. O, besides, this full heart would fly to pieces, if it should entertain the thought that thou lovest me!" For the rest he took home to himself to-day for the first time the improbability of his recent supposition, that a person so reserved as she could have demeaned herself in so unreserved a manner towards the blind Julius, and he asked himself: "Is there not, then, sufficient explanation of her departure from the court, in January's and Matthieu's unholy love, and the holy love of Emanuel?" But that she might not in the morning discover her erroneous confounding of things, he gave his wax figurant exactly the position which he had occupied at the window.

THIRD EASTER-HOLIDAY.

F. Koch's double Jews-harp.--The Sleigh-ride.--The Ball--and....

The reader will wish, with me, that the third Easter-holiday ended something worse than the long 28th Dog-Post-Day.

The sleigh went tolerably, so far as could be foreseen.----I however foresee yet something quite different: that half a million of my reading-customers (for the other half I will answer) cannot find out what is in my hero. It is therefore my office to tell them only so much as this: Victor was never pusillanimous, man's subjection to the yoke of fortune disgusted him; once every day Death took him up on the Sublime Arm, and let him, looking down therefrom, remark how diminutive were all mountains and hills, even graves. Every misfortune hardened him to steel, the Medusa's head of the death's-head turned him to stone, and the melting sun-glance of joyful emotion always vexed him in the remembrance. His sportive humor, his ideal of female perfection, the want of opportunity, and the shield of Minerva, had helped him along over the wind-months of feeling, and he had hitherto worshipped no other sun than the one which is twenty-one million miles distant,--till Heaven or the Devil brought along the nearer one, just in the year 1792. Still things would have gone quite tolerably, and the misfortune would have been easy enough to get through with, if he had been discreet or cool; I mean, if he had not said to himself: "It is fine to weep never for one's self, but yet for another; it is fine to worry down every loss, except that of a heart; and which will a departed friend from his lofty place count greater, if I deliver consolatory sermons to myself on his decease with true composure, or if I sink, yearning, after the loved one, in voluntary, overmastering sorrow?"

Thereby,--and from unacquaintance with the over-powering influence of noble but untamed feelings,--and because he confounded his previous accidental calm of the heart with a voluntary one,--and from an overflowing love of humanity,--he had intentionally let the feelers of his inner man up to this time grow too large,--and thus, by the whirl of all the previous influences, the previous bereavements, the previous emotions of these Easter-days, of this fair village of his youth, he had been driven so far out of his course, that, notwithstanding his considerateness, his court-life, his humor, he forfeited (at least for Easter) somewhat of his old dissimilarity to those geniuses who, like the sea-crab, stretch out feelers which a man can hardly span with his arms....

That sympathetic look of Clotilda which yesterday, after his previous heat, had been a cooling balm, was to him to-day a very burning one; the thought of her eye full of tears for him conjured up all the days of his love for her and her whole image in his heart. I am convinced that not even the Regency-Counsellor, who, for the rest, might by yesterday's funeral-sermon have lost something of his jealousy, as well as, by the republican diversion, somewhat of his love for Clotilda, failed to note the drunken and dreamy look of his eye. The parsonage itself was fortunately to-day an exchange, or a spiritual intelligence-office and recruiting-house; the Chaplain registered--not any of your French _car tel est notre plaisir_, but--the catechumens who were to confess at Whitsuntide.

He would not go over to the castle--his misunderstood friend Mat had already by ten o'clock called to him out of the window a morning-greeting and congratulation upon the snow-storm--until his sleigh had come from the city, so that he might start off at once, because he would not show over yonder any ridiculous emotion. Since the great world had become for him a work-day world, to disguise his feelings from it became harder; one conceals one's self most easily from those whom one respects.

But the three twins and Franz Koch carried him over earlier than he would have gone, as early as half past five o'clock in the afternoon.

The name of Franz Koch in the Dog's papers made me jump off of my feet. If any one of my readers is a guest of the Carlsbad waters, or should happen to be his Majesty, the King of Prussia, William the Second, or one of his court, or the Elector of Saxony, or the Duke of Brunswick, or any other princely person, he has heard the good Koch, who is a modest pensioned soldier, and travels round everywhere with his instrument and plays on it. This instrument, which he calls the double Jews-harp, or mouth-harmonica, consists of an improved pair of jaw-drums, or humming jaws-harps, played at once, which he shifts according to the piece he is playing. His handling of the buzzing-irons bears the same relation to the old Jews-harp playing as harmonica-bells do to servants' bells. I am under obligation to induce such of my readers as have wren's wings to their fancy, or at least, from the heart upwards are _lithopædia_ (petrified fœtuses), or have the ear-drum membrane for nothing but to be drummed on,--to induce, I say, with the little oratory I have, such readers to tumble the aforesaid Franz out of the house, if he undertakes to come and buzz before them. For it amounts to just nothing, and the wretchedest bass-viol or rebeck screams louder in my opinion; nay, its hum is so low, that he played at Carlsbad before not more than twelve customers at once, because one cannot sit near enough to him, particularly as in his leading pieces he has the light carried away, that neither eye nor ear may disturb the fantasies. If, however, a reader is differently constituted,--a poet, perchance,--or a lover,--or very tender,--or like Victor,--or like me; then, indeed, let him without scruple listen with still and melting soul to Franz Koch, or--for to-day is just the time when he is not to be had--to _me_.

The jolly Englishman had sent this harmonist to Victor with the card: "The bearer of this is the bearer of an echo which he carries in his pocket." Victor preferred, therefore, to take him over to the friend of all sweet tones, that her departure might not deprive her of this melodious hour. It seemed to him like going through a long church, when he entered Clotilda's Loretto-chapel; her simple chamber was like Mary's sitting-room, enclosed with a temple. She had already completed arranging herself in her black ornamental dress. A black costume is a fine eclipse of the sun, wherein one absolutely cannot take one's eyes away from it: Victor, who, with his _Chinese_ regard for this color, brought with him to-day to this magic a defenceless soul, an enkindled eye, grew pale and confused at the radiant face of Clotilda, over which the trace of a trouble that had rained out, hovered like a rainbow over the bright, blue sky. It was not the cheerfulness of light thoughts, which every maiden takes on when she dresses herself, but the cheerfulness of a pure soul full of patience and love. He trembled lest he should tread on two kinds of thistles,--on the painted ones of the floor, over which he took care to step, and upon the satirical ones of the fine observers around him, with which he was always coming in contact. Her stepmother was still upon the stucco-work and finishing of her worm-bag,[45] and the Evangelist was in her toilet-chamber as assistant-priest and collaborator in the finery department. So that Clotilda had still time to hear the performer on the mouth-harmonica; and the Chamberlain offered himself to his daughter and my hero for he was a father of good breeding towards his daughter--as part of the audience, although he could make little out of music, table- and ball-music excepted.

Victor now saw for the first time, by Clotilda's delight in the musician he had brought with him, that her harmonious heart loved to tremble in unison with strings; in fact, he was often mistaken about her, because she--like thee, dearest * * *--expressed her highest praise as well as her highest censure by silence. She begged her father, who had already heard the mouth-harmonica in Carlsbad, to give her and Victor an idea of it,--he gave it: "It expressed in masterly manner, not so much the _fortissimo_ as the _piano-dolce_, and, like the simple harmonica, was best adapted to the _adagio_." She answered,--leaning on the arm of Victor, who led her into a still chamber darkened for the occasion,--"music was perhaps too good for drinking-songs and for mirthful sensations. As sorrow ennobled man, and, by the little cutting pangs which it gave him, unfolded him as regularly as they do the buds of the carnation, which they slit open with a knife that they may bloom without bursting; so music as an artificial sorrow took the place of the true." "Is the true so rare?" said Victor in the dark chamber which only _one_ wax-taper lighted. He came close to Clotilda, and her father sat opposite to him.

Blissful hour! thou--that didst once, with the echo-strains of this harmonica, pass through my soul,--glide along by me once more, and let the resonance of that echo again murmur around thee!

But scarcely had the modest, quiet virtuoso put the instrument of enchantment to his lips, when Victor felt that now (before the light was removed) he should not dare to do as at other times, when he pictured to himself at every adagio appropriate scenes, and underlaid every piece with peculiar fantasyings for its texts. For it is an unfailing method of giving tones their omnipotence, when one makes them the accompanying voices of our inner mood, and so out of instrumental music makes as it were vocal music, out of inarticulate tones articulate ones, whereas the fairest series of tones, which no definite subject arranges into alphabet and speech, glides off from bathed, but not softened hearts. When, therefore, the sweetest sounds that ever flowed over human lips as consonants of the soul began to well forth from the trembling mouth-harmonica,--when he felt that these little steel-rings, as if they were the setting and touch-board[46] of his heart, would make their agitations his own,--then did he constrain his feverish heart, on which, besides, all wounds came out to-day, to shrink up against the tones, and not picture to itself any scenes, merely that he might not burst into tears before the light was gone.

Higher and higher swept the drag-net of uplifting tones with his heart in its grasp. One melancholy remembrance after another said to him in this short ghostly hour of the past, "Crush me not out, but give me my tear." All his imprisoned tears were clustered around his heart, and in them his whole inner being, lifted from the ground, softly swam. But he collected himself: "Canst thou not yet deny thyself," he said to himself, "not even a moist eye? No, with a dry eye receive this sad, stifled echo of thy whole breast, receive this resonance from Arcadia, and all these weeping sounds, into a broken heart."--Amidst such a secret melting away, which he often took for composure, it always seemed within him as if a breaking voice from a far region addressed him, whose words had the cadence of verses; the breaking voice again addressed him: "Are not these tones composed of vanished hopes? Do not these sounds, Horion, run into one another like human days? O, look not on thy heart; on the dust-cloud of the crumbling heart, as on a mist, the gleaming forms of former days cast their image."--Nevertheless he still answered calmly, "Life is truly too short for two tears,--the tear of woe, and the other." ... But now, as the white dove, which Emanuel saw fall in the churchyard, flew through his imaginings,--as he thought to himself, "This dove, truly, once fluttered in my dream of Clotilda, and clung to the ice-mountains; ah! it is the image of the fading angel beside me,"--and as the tones fluttered more and more faintly, and at last ran round in the whispering leaves of a death-garland,--and as the breaking voice returned again and said: "Knowest thou not the old tones? Lo! they sounded in thy dream before her birthday festival, and there made the sick soul beside thee sink up to her heart in the grave, and she left nothing behind for thee but an eye full of tears, and a soul full of grief"----"No, that was all she left me," said in broken tones his weary heart, and all his suppressed tears gushed in torrents from his eyes....

But the light was just then carried from the chamber, and the first stream fell unseen into the lap of night.

The harmonica began the melody of the dead: "How softly they slumber." Ah, in such tones do the far-wandering waves of the sea of eternity beat against the hearts of darkling mortals who stand on the shore and yearn to put forth! Now art thou, Horion, wafted by a wave of harmony out of the mist-rain of life over into the light of eternity! Hear, what tones murmur round the broad fields of Eden! Do not the strains, dissipated into breaths, reverberate from distant flowers, and float, swollen by echo, round the swan-bosom, which, blissfully dissolving, swims on pinions, and draw it on from flood to flood of melody, and sink with it in the distant flowers, which a cloud of fragrances fills, and does not in the fragrant dusk the soul glow again like a ruddy evening, ere it sets in bliss?

O Horion, does the earth still abide under us, drawing its circle of death-hills round the breadth of life? Do these tones tremble in an earthly air? O Music! thou that bringest the Past and the Future with their flying flames so near to our wounds, art thou the evening-breath of this life, or the morning air of the life to come? Ay, thy sounds are echoes, which angels snatch from the second world's tones of gladness, to convey down into our mute hearts, into our dreary night the faint spring-melodies of heavens flying far above us! And thou, dying harmonica-tone! verily thou comest to us out of an peal of exultation, which, driven from heaven to heaven, dies at last in the remotest mute heaven, which consists of nothing but a deep, broad, tranquil, and eternal bliss....

"Tranquil and eternal bliss," repeats Horion's dissolving soul, whose rapture I have hitherto made my own, "ay, _there_ will lie the region where I shall lift up my eyes toward the All-gracious, and spread out my arms toward _her_, toward this weary soul, toward this great heart. Then shall I fall upon thy heart, Clotilda, then shall I clasp thee forever, and the flood of tranquil and eternal bliss will close around us. Breathe again toward life, earthly tones, between my breast and hers, and then let a little night, an undulating shadowy outline, swim along on your light waves, and I will look toward it and say, That was my life;--then shall I say more softly, and weep more intensely, Ay, man is unhappy, but only on the earth."

O, if there is a human being over whom, at these last words, memory draws great rain-clouds, to him, to her, I say, Beloved brother, sister, I am, to-day, as much moved as thou; I respect the sorrow which thou hidest,--ah! thou excusest me, and I thee....

The tune stopped and died away. What stillness now in the dark! Every sigh took the form of a long-drawn breathing. Only the nebulous stars of sensibility sparkled brightly in the darkness. No one saw whose eye had been wet. Victor looked into the still, black air before him, which a few minutes ago had been filled with hanging-gardens of tones, with dissolving air-castles of the human ear, with diminished heavens, and which now remained a naked, black firework-scaffold.

But the harmonica soon filled this darkness again with meteorological apparitions of worlds. Ah, why, then, must it needs strike precisely that melody which woke such restless yearnings in my Victor, the "Forget-me-not," which sounded out to him the verses, as if he repeated them to Clotilda. "Forget me not, now that fate sternly calls thee away from me. Forget me not, when the cool earth one day rests lightly upon this heart, that fondly beat for thee. Think it is I, when some soft voice shall whisper to thy thought, Forget me not." ... And O, when these tones intertwine themselves with waving flowers, when they flow backward from one past to another, when they ripple more and more faintly through the past years that repose back of man's memory,--at last only murmur under the dawn of life,--only well up inaudibly under the cradle of man,--and stiffen in our cold twilight and dry up in the midnight, when each of us was not,--then does man, deeply moved, cease any longer to conceal his sighs and his infinite pangs.

The still angel at Victor's side could no longer veil them, and Victor heard Clotilda's first sigh.

Ay, then he took her hand as if he would sustain her, hovering over an open grave.

She gave up her hand to him, and her pulse throbbed trembling in unison with his.

Finally only the last lingering tone of the song still flung out its melodious circles in the ether, and its wake undulated away over a whole past,--then a distant echo wrapped it up in a fluttering breath of air, and wafted it away through deeper echoes, and finally over to the last which lay round about heaven,--then the tone expired and flew as a soul into one of Clotilda's sighs.

Then the first tear escaped from her, and fell like a hot heart on Victor's hand.

Her friend was overpowered,--she was carried away,--he pressed the soft hand,--she drew it out of his,--and went slowly out of the chamber, in order to come again to the help of the too tender heart, over whose sweet signs night hung her veil....

The light which was brought in took away these dream-worlds. Matthieu and the Chamberlain's lady appeared also. We will not, however, in this soft mood, when one is precisely the severest against evil natures, say or think anything about the new couple which cannot help its contrast to our tenderness. Victor said this to himself, too, but more than once; because the Apothecary's lyingly alleged engagement of Clotilda to Matthieu impressed itself upon him in the liveliest colors, as resembling that platonic union, in which the pure spirit, driven out of its ether and with crooked-up wings, is immured in an unclean body. Clotilda came back. She was in a state of embarrassment towards Victor, merely because he was in one, or was to be still more so by her side in the sleigh,--the swollen ball of her eye she withdrew from the light. As condensation of tears, like inspissation of milk, oppresses and destroys; his sadness, repressed and drawn back into his innermost being, sought an outlet through the voice, which was vehement and abrupt; through the motions of the body, which were quick; even through vivacity of expression;--in short, it was well that they started.